(MENAFN- AFP) Angel, 17, was due to be released soon so was not afraid to talk about the abuse he says staff mete out in Bulgaria's dilapidated and only youth prison, Boychinovtsi Correctional Home.
"I was beaten a week after I arrived. They told me to come to the bathroom, it is their boxing ring," Angel, one of 62 adolescent boys locked up at the facility, said as AFP was allowed inside for a heavily supervised recent visit.
"If you say something bad about the prison over the phone, the officer downstairs cuts the line and asks you to come over," the tall, thin teenager added.
But others, fearful of the consequences of speaking to outsiders were not so talkative. Apart from Angel, only a few selected by staff were allowed to speak to AFP -- and none in private.
"I was not beaten and I never saw the wardens using sticks," said a sheepish Sevdalin, 20, half-way through a nine-year sentence for a crime he described as "the worst".
The director of the prison also denied any abuse by staff.
Eight years after ex-communist Bulgaria joined the European Union as its poorest member, it is still struggling to reform its inefficient, corrupt judicial system and improve deplorable conditions in all its prisons.
But Boychinovtsi has come in for particular criticism, having been the subject of two recent damning reports -- prompting a scrutinising mission by the justice ministry and an investigation by prosecutors.
According to one of the reports, issued in December by rights group Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), staff routinely beat the inmates, including with bats, broomsticks and other objects.
These were punishments for "speaking loudly", "smoking in the TV room" or "not cleaning well", BHC expert Zhenya Ivanova told AFP.
And after the BHC visit, the boys were threatened.
"They were told, 'Don't forget that they'll leave and you'll stay here, you'll leave in a wheelchair'," Ivanova said.
According to the second report, from the Council of Europe's Prevention of Torture Committee (CPT) issued in late January, another common sanction applied "frequently" is solitary confinement.
This took place in "cold and dilapidated bar-fronted cells, equipped with low wooden sleeping platforms and unscreened, dirty and malodorous toilets," the CPT said, calling the prison "extremely dilapidated and dirty".
- Bitter cold -
The facility is set in an isolated rural area of northern Bulgaria and consists of a sprawl of former military barracks built before World War II in varying states of disrepair.
The inmates -- mostly aged 14 to 18 -- are serving time for thefts, assaults and even murders.
They complained to the BHC about the bitter cold in the rooms, saying they did not take off their jackets during the day and slept two in a bed to keep warm.
The heating was on during AFP's visit but taped cardboard substituted missing glass panes on some of the windows.
In the rooms, four beds and two empty wardrobes were the only objects. There were no personal items.
The boys said they washed their clothes in cold water. Hot water was available only on Mondays and Thursdays in bathrooms the CPT said were "in an outrageous condition".
According to one warder who talked to AFP, the rundown facilities were in the state they were "left over from communism", which ended 25 years ago.
And with the greenhouses deserted and workshops long since locked up, it was clear that not much was done to prepare the young prisoners for release into the outside world.
All inmates received education but rarely at levels that corresponded to their age as most of them came here illiterate. Vocational training courses were discontinued a few years ago.
At 20, for example, Sevdalin -- who should have been sent to an adults' prison at 18 -- is currently taking lessons at 14-year-old level.
- 'No concrete complaints' -
The prison's director of 11 years, Mimi Tsocheva, denied staff was abusing the inmates, and blamed an acute shortage of funding for the state of the jail and the lack of vocational training.
"I have not received any concrete complaints from inmates that they were maltreated or beaten," Tsocheva told AFP in her office at the prison.
At the same time, she said that many of the problems were caused by the ills of Bulgarian society in general, particularly with the Roma community.
"When they come here, the majority of the boys are illiterate -- they can't read or write. Some of them have never been to school," Tsocheva said.
Tsocheva blamed "gross neglect" from their mostly poor Roma families as the reason for the boys to end up here. Eight of the current inmates have returned to Boychinovtsi more than once.
None of the boys was visited by their families, although this could be down to the fact the prison is difficult to get to, particularly with public transport.
"They come from nothing and go back to nothing -- they step out of this gate when their time is up and nobody is waiting," said the warder, who preferred not to be cited by name.
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