A SINISTER HOAX ACCUSING BRITISH PARENTS OF ABUSING THEIR CHILDREN BECAME A TERRIFYING GLOBAL WITCH HUNT
On 5 February 2015, parents whose children were attending Christ Church Primary School in the affluent London suburb of Hampstead received an email out of the blue.
It reassured them that “recent serious online allegations” about the school had been dealt with by the relevant authorities.
With no explanation as to what the incident was, parents went online to see if they could find any local mention of what might have been going on. But they didn’t have to do a deep dive to find what they were looking for. Instead, a series of videos immediately popped up. On the screen, two children who attended the school, Abigail and Joseph*, were describing in horrifying detail sexual abuse they claimed they had been subjected to by teachers and parents at the school, as well as priests, social services and even police. The accusations sent shockwaves through the well-to-do community. In the videos – which were titled things like “Killing Babies” and “Sex At School”, and were racking up views into the millions with every passing minute – the youngsters also accused their abusers of being Satanists, who operated out of a local church and “danced with the skulls of babies”
And the person the children said was leading the whole thing? Their own father, Ricky Dearman.And the person the children said was leading the whole thing? Their own father, Ricky Dearman.
CULT
The videos had been made months earlier, around August 2014, when the children were on holiday in Marrakesh. They were there with their mother – Russian-born Bikram yoga teacher and alternative nutritionist Ella Draper – and her new partner Abraham Christie, a convicted criminal from Tottenham, who was deep into conspiracy theories.
At the time, Draper was locked in an acrimonious custody dispute with the children’s father. Speaking on Tortoise Media’s podcastHoaxed, Draper claimed that whenever the kids came home from visiting him, they seemed upset. She said they were prone to spontaneous outbursts of violence, and she alleged she’d discovered this was because their father had been forcing them to fight each other. On that trip to Marrakesh, Draper claimed that the youngsters spontaneously claimed they had been abused “for years” by dad Ricky and his “Satanic cult”. Draper and Christie filmed the allegations, encouraging the kids to go into detail. After uploading the footage to YouTube, Draper recorded her own video, titled “Statement From The Mother”. Opening with the words, “Witness statement”, she said, “I believe my children are telling the truth when they describe that their father is the leader of a Satanic cult. I also believe that many parents abuse the ch
