Bishop Abuladze resigns as director of orphan boarding school in Ninotsminda

The Georgian Catholicos-Patriarch holds the position of the director of the orphan boarding school in Ninotsminda after human rights defenders had criticized Bishop Spiridon Abuladze. The orphan boarding school still accommodates 23 children, and the institution will not close for at least another year, the Georgia’s Patriarchate announces.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that some of the inmates of the orphan boarding school said they did not want to stay, and they were taken out. On June 6, the court pronounced a decision that all inmates of the orphan boarding school should be distributed to families and family-type shelters. By June 13, 23 children still stayed at the orphanage.

Several former inmates of the orphan boarding school reported that they received threats after testifying to investigators. An uncle of a witness in a case on child abuse at the orphan boarding school has been accused of threatening his nephew, the General Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia reports.

According to Edishera Karchava, a lawyer of the Georgia’s Patriarchate, Bishop Spiridon (Abuladze) voluntarily resigned from the post of the director of the orphan boarding school. The lawyer repeated that there was no talk of an immediate closure of the orphanage.

“There are too many children here who do not have parents, and some of them do not want to be separated from their guardian,” the lawyer of the Georgia’s Patriarchate explained.

The process of the closure will continue until 2022, all this time the orphan boarding school will work, Edishera Karchava concludes.

The Georgian authorities are afraid to react to violations of the law and “do not want to anger the Patriarchate,” said Nika Simonishvili, the chairman of the Georgian Young Lawyers' Association.