In the 1970s, while serving in the Soviet Army, Anatoly Matviyenko became an invalid. In the beginning of the1990s, he served a sentence in a prison colony for theft. In the colony, Matviyenko was introduced to Christianity and began to study the Bible, after which he quit smoking and drinking alcohol.
After his release from the colony, he arrived in Odessa, where he was baptized into the community of the Mormonov Church (The Church of Holy Last Days). In September of 2004, he became a priest. Matviyenko did not have an apartment, so he was living in his garage temporarily at the time of his arrest.

On May 22, 2006, officers of the Frunzensky District Police Department took Matviyenko’s passport, his pension book, his cell phone, his medical card, documents for the garage, and his keys from him and stated that he had killed three people, telling him to acknowledge that he committed the crime. However, a June 15, 2006, decision, signed by Inspector of the District Procuratorship A. Kibets, said that Matviyenko had killed not three people, but one person.

The police beat and tortured Matviyenko; however, he denied all charges. They placed the priest in the Odessa SIZO (remand prison). From there, he directed complaints to the Attorney General of Ukraine A. Medvedko, and to the Attorney General of the Odessa Region, A. Galkin. This is confirmed in a written communication of January 3, 2007, by the administration of the Odessa SIZO. Matviyenko received no answers to his complaints. After four months he was freed.

Matviyenko immediately went to the village of Domantivka in the Kiev region and settled in the house of his deceased parents. His wife and six month old daughter lived with him. Five days after his release, three officers of the Frunzensky ROVD broke in to his home in the middle of the night with inspector A. Kibtets, and Major of the Skvirsky District Police Department, A. Vysotsky. They again delivered Matviyenko to the Odessa Region.

In the Frunzensky ROVD, and then in the Great- Mikhailovsk ROVD, they beat the priest. Inspector Kibets stated that he was detained "for vagabondage". Under threat of death, the tortured Matviyenko signed a statement of non-departure. The Inspector refused to return his passport, pension book, cell phone, and all the remaining items that had been taken.

Matviyenko was in the police torture chambers for 24 days. On November 4, 2006, guards took the half-dressed priest to the adjacent Vinnitsa region and pushed him out of a motor vehicle in the town of Krizhopol. The local police found the hungry, morally crushed Matviyenko, and, since he had no documents, sent him to the Vinnitsa police station. There the priest spent thirty days. According to him, there is a reign of terrible abuse at the station. Operatives chain people up in handcuffs and beat their feet with sticks.

From December 5, 2006, the priest has lived in the village of Domantivka in his parents’ house. Because his pension book was taken by the police, he has been unable to obtain money for several months. Matviyenko has written many complaints to President of Ukraine Victor Yushenko. The Chief of the Presidential Service on Citizen Relations, O. Parakud, and his deputy S. Konyukhov, continue to transfer these complaints to the procuratorship.