Abe & Ella: A match made in hell

In our continuing series on the genesis of the Hampstead ritual abuse hoax, we’ve looked at who started the hoax, when they started it, and how it was promoted.

Ultimately, though, while players like Belinda McKenzie, Sabine McNeill, Neelu Berry, Charlotte Alton Ward, and Angela Power-Disney have all been integral to setting up and publicising the hoax, the thing could never have proceeded without Abraham Christie and Ella Gareeva Draper.

As one of our commenters asked, “Would any of this have happened if Abe and Ella hadn’t met?”

Like The Watcher, we’ve considered the possibility that a third party introduced Abe and Ella: one hypothesis is that Sabine might have known Ella via their shared interest in Bikram yoga. Another is that they were introduced by Araya Soma, who was friends with Abe’s ex-girlfriend, Lisa Cereni.

We do know that both Abe and Ella attended raw food events in May 2014, where the introduction might have been facilitated.

In this picture, Abe poses with his juicer at one of the raw food events. He seems to have been there to promote his Raw HempStars business:

….and in this one, Abe and Ella pose with ‘Wild Grass Messiah’ Piter Caizer (who is also Facebook friends with both Araya Soma and Lisa Cereni):

In fact, Abe posted this one on his Raw HempStars Google+ page on May 19, which bears out Mrs Justice Pauffley’s statement that the two met in May 2014.

We cannot verify exactly who introduced Abe and Ella, but it does seem oddly coincidental that they got together in May 2014, at the same time when RD had been granted increased access to his children.

Whether or not she was actively looking for someone to help her subvert this new state of affairs, Abe does seem to have happened onto the scene at a very fortuitous moment.

As he said to Jean-Clement, “She came to me because she knew I didn’t, I wasn’t a weird guy, she knew there was something, I was clean. And she knew in her heart that I could help her, in her heart”.

Where does Araya fit in?

Araya Soma seems to have been recruited early on, as an intermediary between Abrella and the ‘alt media’ types they’d need to reach if their hoax was to reach massive proportions online.

As we’ve mentioned before, Abrella tried to contact Brian Gerrish directly, as soon as they’d returned to England with the videos of RD’s children.

At the same time, Araya was tasked with contacting Bill Maloney, a self-styled filmmaker with a special interest in publicising child sex abuse cases. We’ve written before about the possibility that Abe and Maloney had met previously. If this was the case, Abe might have felt certain that Maloney would respond positively to his call for help; when Maloney turned him down, did Abe call in Araya to pinch hit for him?

Whatever the case, Araya met with resistance from Maloney and his gatekeepers:

Aside from her loose grasp of the facts (she gets the kids’ ages wrong, and mangles details of the story), Araya lets slip a couple of interesting details:

1. She admits that Abe was violent toward the children;
2. She admits that Gerrish wouldn’t touch the hoax either;
3. She suggests that a ‘helper’ had already been recruited—could this have been Charlotte Alton Ward/Jacqui Farmer?

Here, it looks as though Maloney or his people suggested that Abrella approach the police—a surprisingly sensible suggestion.

Araya confirms she is in receipt of copies of the videos—which raises the question: exactly how many people did Ella give copies to? She seems to have been handing them round like party favours.

There’s been some speculation that Araya has a connection to Belinda McKenzie, as Belinda once owned a New Age-type shop in Glastonbury, where Araya lives; however, we’ve been unable to confirm any link there.

However, we do know that Araya has a link to Abe, via his ex-girlfriend Lisa; indeed, in her early references to Hoaxtead she mentions “what a friend of mine’s new girlfriend and him have been thru (sic)”.

We believe that Araya was recruited by Abe, with a view to bringing Maloney on board very early on. Her failure to do so might have contributed to their eventual alienation.