Hilary Clinton eats dead babies. Covid was invented by Bill Gates so he could carry out a global programme of mind control. And at the heart of a leafy London suburb lurks a Satanic sex cult whose members ritually kill children and drink their blood.
Such outrageous conspiracy theories would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous – as one 56-year-old retired writer from Ottowa found out.
Still bearing the emotional scars and going only by her first name Karen, she tells Metro.co.uk how she was harassed, stalked and driven to the brink, all because she tried to help debunk one of the most disturbing frauds the UK has ever seen: the Hampstead sex cult hoax, a conspiracy theory that centred around a church and school in north London.
Karen, who lived more than 3,000 miles away in Canada, had been accidentally linked to the school through a misunderstanding online, but once she saw how hateful the abuse could be, she knew she had to help others experiencing the same thing in the UK.
Recalling the hundreds of emails and death threats she received from people who were adamant she was wrong, that there really was a Satanic child sex ring operating out of suburbia, Karen says: ‘The harassment got pretty brutal. The messages said things like, “Watch your back. We’re coming to get you. The criminals that I know have drawn straws to see who gets to kill you. We’ll let you choose which end of you goes into the wood chipper first”.’
In one message she was even sent a picture of a severed human head.
‘I don’t even know where you would find a picture like that,’ she says in a call from her home in Canada. ‘It was just the most grotesque and terrifying experience.’
One stalker sent her a total of 855 emails and posted numerous threatening videos about her online accusing her of being a ‘Satanist peadophile who murdered and ate babies’. In a video, he laid out an elaborate plan to kidnap her using thugs dressed in fake police uniforms and a transit van. He told Karen she ‘ought to get used to looking over her shoulder.’
While an investigation into how rumours of the fictitious cult came to exist is currently gripping podcast listeners as part of Tortoise Media’s Hoaxed series, it’s a story that dates back to 2014.
In September of that year, two children from a Hampstead primary school*, known only as ‘P’ and ‘Q’, were recorded by phone in a series of short videos alleging that they had been sexually abused by their father, teachers and other adults.
The children told some incredibly gruesome stories. They said they were part of a group that was supplied with babies from all over the world. The babies had been abused, tortured and then sacrificed. Their throats were slit, blood was drunk and the cult members would then dance wearing babies’ skulls, the children said.
The children’s mother, Ella Draper, was a Russian-born yoga teacher. She and her partner, Abraham Christie, backed up the assertions that the children’s father was the leader of the cult and that other adults were involved in the abuse. A high court judgement later categorically refuted all the claims.
Following a police investigation and three interviews with the two children, it was reported that Ella and Abraham had coerced them into telling the lies, with Abraham torturing them, hitting them and pouring water over their faces until they couldn’t breathe.
In March 2015, the High Court judgement by Mrs Justice Pauffley ruled: ‘I am able to state with complete conviction that none of the allegations are true. I am entirely certain that everything Ms Draper, her partner Abraham Christie and the children said about those matters was fabricated. The claims are baseless. Those who have sought to perpetuate them are evil and/or foolish.’
Although Ella’s lawyer appealed to overturn the ruling a few months later in August, neither she nor Abraham were present. Her lawyer claimed that Ella fled the country because “she panicked” and was “terrified of the stories she had heard from her children”.
While the appeal was not granted, frenzied rumours surrounding the Hampstead sex cult were still rife – and it was all down to Sabine McNeill – a German-born woman who had been working as an informal legal adviser with Ella in her custody case with the children’s father since 2014.
McNeill had become obsessed with family courts, believing they were trying to steal children from their families, and had decided to throw her weight behind Ella’s sinister allegations.
Just weeks before Justice Pauffley’s ruling, McNeill had demanded that the courts release the children to Ella’s care, or she would release damaging information.
When the judge would not concede to her attempted blackmail, McNeill sent all the material Ella had given her to a blogger, with a note that ‘this could go viral’.
The information contained a list of the names, street addresses, work and contact details of around 175 adults that had been accused of involvement in the fictitious demonic sex cult. McNeill posted the videos of the children’s testimonies online for all to see.
A touch paper had been lit.
Despite a judge ruling that there was no legitimacy to these claims, conspiracy theorists began to hound parents at the school. When a police guard was set up at the school gates, they held protests outside the local church, threatening to burn it down. The flames were fanned by conspiracy sites Infowars and the David Icke forum, leaving parents in fear for their children’s safety.
Karen learned about what was going on when she started receiving hundreds of hits from random strangers on her personal blog in February 2015, which she published with her sister.
The pair had previously posted about an art exhibition they had seen mentioning an artist who had links to the Hampstead church – but it was enough for the conspiracy theorists to conclude that Karen was somehow involved in the alleged abuse, and that harassment began.
‘I talked to a parent who had been targeted. They told me the kids involved couldn’t go anywhere without adults; they had to have trackers,’ Karen recalls. ‘It ruined so many childhoods.’
Families’ phones rang at all hours with nuisance calls. Parents were forced to change their route to school, give their children new names or move house, carry out drills in case of intruders and install panic buttons in their homes. Lives and businesses were ruined. One mother slept with a crowbar under the bed.
Another parent told Karen how pedophiles kept emailing her, disturbingly asking her to provide her nine-year-old daughter for sex.
And they were bombarding Karen, too. After she realised she was being linked to the hoax, she posted a joke comment.
‘We made the mistake of publishing something like: “Thank you reptilian overlords for sending so many hits to our blog”.’ She was lightheartedly referencing the conspiracy that interstellar lizards in people suits rule the country, but her joke backfired.
‘They took it seriously and we started getting death threats.’
Karen was told: ‘We are coming to get you. We know who you are.’
It was terrifying. Karen ended up hyper vigilant and worried for her own and her family’s safety and her sister’s life – who lived in London at the time and was also known to the conspiracy theorists.
But Karen, who says ‘I don’t like bullies and I don’t like bulls***’, couldn’t leave the parents on their own to fight the battle. She turned detective and devoted six years of her life to taking down the enemy.
Setting up the Hoaxtead Research blog, she formed a network of fellow fighters who worked to get the social media giants to remove links to the children’s videos and to gather evidence against the hoaxers that would eventually be used to prosecute them.
Why do people believe conspiracy theories?
Conspiracy theory specialist, Jovan Byford, Professor of Psychology and History at the Open University, says:
‘One of the key features of conspiracy theories is that they are irrefutable: the whole allegation is set up in such a way that lack of proof or, more often, strong disconfirming evidence, can be turned on its head, and taken as proof of the craftiness and power of those behind the abuse and the cover up, and as confirmation of their ability to conceal their evil deed. This irrefutable explanatory logic of conspiracy theories is what makes these types of allegations so difficult to eradicate.
‘There is a long history of allegations of Satanic ritual abuse periodically popping up in different places. The wave of ‘Satanic Panic’ began in the US in the 1980s with thousands of reported cases of unsubstantiated allegations of ritual abuse. While these panics pre-date the internet, these days, they tend to be circulated on social media.
‘Why do seemingly normal, educated, intelligent people believe in conspiracy theories? Attempts to identify what kind of people believe in conspiracy theories have failed to produce clear answers, and there is no doubt that otherwise perfectly sensible and intelligent people can become susceptible to their influence. But it is equally true that the world cannot be divided into believers and sceptics when it comes to conspiracy theories. People engage in conspiracy theories in complex ways which need to be better understood.
‘Conspiracy theories also sometimes capture people’s more general anxieties about their lives about safety, authority, secrecy and so on. But it is also worth noting that conspiracy claims are often articulated in manipulative ways, that push people’s emotional buttons (especially when it comes to children) and exploit their vulnerability.’
But it came at a personal toll as she was hounded.
‘Each time I received a new email or found another video, I felt shaken and distressed,’ admits Karen. ‘The graphic, obscene threats left me feeling sickened and worried.
‘I felt my self-confidence slowly ebbing away. At times I was tempted to set my email to block the barrage of threats and abuse, but I resisted. While I felt a surge of panic and revulsion every time a new threat popped up in my inbox—often several times per day—I thought it prudent to be aware of anything the stalker or his friends might be planning to do, in case they were actively planning to harm me or my family. I felt I had to be on high alert at all times.
‘I began to feel a constant sense of dread, punctuated by moments of sheer panic, and I began to question myself constantly, she adds. ‘I found it hard to concentrate and I felt tense and anxious much of the time. I rarely slept through the night, often waking in a state of anxiety, sweating and with my heart pounding.’
To top it all off, her stalker was due to be at the trial of McNeill, who in 2018 was charged with stalking, causing serious harm or distress and breaching a restraining order.
Karen, who’d travelled over to London to report on the trial for her blog, remembers feeling terrified, but she forced herself to go and remained aware of where he was sitting in the public gallery the entire time.
‘While I was in London, someone knocked on my door early one Sunday morning, and I completely froze,’ she recalls. ‘I felt unable to breathe. I had not shared my address with anybody else, I wasn’t expecting a visitor, and all I could think was that my stalker or one of his friends had found me. At that moment, I actually feared I was about to die.’
She left the door unanswered and remained inside for the rest of the day.
However, her hard work paid off as in January 2019, McNeill, then aged 73, was jailed for nine years. Hers was the most high-profile of a number of criminal convictions related to the hoax.
Meanwhile, the two who concocted the warped tale have gone underground.
Having left the country before they could face justice, Draper and Christie are said to live an itinerant lifestyle, travelling internationally and popping up occasionally to give interviews to conspiracy theory websites.
For the innocent families caught up in all this, their nightmare is yet to be fully over, as the Hampstead cult theory persists, with anonymous online accounts still posting the harrowing videos of the kids’ fabricated testimonies.
‘Just recently I noticed someone who brought up almost every piece of crap alleged evidence that has ever been associated with the case and spewed them all out on Twitter,’ says Karen. ‘And I’m like – dude, give it up. You lost!’
For her, although it was a battle worth fighting, it has left scars. The abuse Karen received left her suffering from anxiety attacks. She remembers: ‘I was afraid to go out of my house. I became incredibly easy to startle. I had all the symptoms of PTSD and I was on medication for some time after.
‘Still, to this day, am cautious about going into poorly lit areas such as parking garages. I check up and down the street when I go outside, and am always on the lookout for people who might be about to do me harm.’
Once you believe one piece of a conspiracy theory, it’s a lot easier for someone to sell you the next piece
Last year, Karen’s stalker was finally brought to justice. He pleaded guilty to three charges of harassment and was detained on a hospital order for an indefinite sentence.
‘I was glad that he was convicted,’ says Karen. ‘I was also glad that he was put into a psychiatric facility because I felt he’s the kind of person who might be able to benefit from that, if they’re able to reach him. I feel that it is a safer space than prison, and that he will have a chance to be somewhat rehabilitated if that’s possible.
‘I see him as a sick person, rather than an evil person. But what he was doing was evil. I also think he was used a lot by some of the more prominent hoaxers who would tell him things that were completely made up. I believe they use him as a gun to fire their bullets.’
Karen says she feels safer now, and happier, but is frustrated that people, despite all the evidence in front of them, still believe such insane theories.
‘The Hampstead Hoax was used by people in the United States as evidence for the whole “Hillary Clinton eats babies” thing,’ she explains. ‘So you have QAnon and Pizzagate, and they all kind of feed into each other. And once you believe one piece of a conspiracy theory it’s a lot easier for someone to sell you the next piece.
‘Then you’ll find people end up with this meta-conspiracy mindset where pretty much anything that comes down the pike, they accept. Covid makes your brains fall out. “We’re in”. 5G is a government plot to control your mind. “Check”.
‘Criminals you can deal with,’ she adds. ‘But with people who belong to what amounts to an internet cult – it’s a little bit harder to talk sense to them. I do feel now that the tide is turning and people are beginning to realise what the internet can do with the power that it can have, spreading and creating this kind of viciousness.
‘I think a lot of the people who just accept the story [as true] do not think of themselves not as bad or evil or deluded. But as heroes. And that, I find in some ways, more scary.’
*Names of locations have been deliberately omitted to protect those involved.
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