FAQ update #3: How to navigate the FAQs

We’re on our third day of updating and refreshing the FAQ section of the blog, and to be honest we’re starting to get a bit cross-eyed. At one point it occurred to us that while there’s a metric tonne of information in them thar pages, it might be difficult for the average reader to find what they were looking for. (We worked this out while looking for a piece we knew we had seen…it’s got to be in here somewhere…WHERE IS IT DAMMIT?!)

So now, if you check out the main FAQ page, you’ll see something that looks like this:

What’s the real story?

Are you new to the Hampstead SRA hoax story? Have you wondered whether it could all possibly be true? Do you have questions about the children’s videos, the police investigation, the medical results? Do you wonder why RD’s children were able to recite so much detail, or whether they were coerced into retracting their statements?

We hope these FAQ pages will help answer those questions and more. If you have specific questions you’d like to see added here, please don’t hesitate to let us know!

Here’s a table of contents of the FAQ so far, listing the pages and the questions they contain. To find what you’re looking for, just click on the highlighted links.

How it all began

1. How did the Hampstead SRA hoax begin?
2. Who are Abe and Ella?
3. How were the allegations developed?
4. What were the allegations?
5. What happened during the police investigation?

The hoax timeline

• Prior to May 2014: Ricky and Ella’s history of family court battles
• May 2014: Ricky applies to the courts for more contact with his children; Abe meets Ella
• June 2014: Abe has a fight at the children’s school; Belinda McKenzie begins hinting at her “next big thing”
• August 2014: Abe and Ella take the children to Morocco
• 4 September 2014: Abe and Ella return to the UK and go straight to see Jean-Clement Yaohirou, who records Abe, Ella, and the children reciting details of their allegations
• 5 September 2014: Jean-Clement hands the audio recording to a friend, who recognises the name of one of the parents accused of being in the cult. Jean-Clement’s friend gives the recording to the named parent, who contacts the police, either in person or via his lawyer.
• 5 September 2014: Upon receiving word of this recording, Barnet police launch investigation
• 8 September 2014: Finnbarr Hagan, an associate of Brian Gerrish, visits Abe and Ella, secretly films himself interviewing the children
• 11 September 2014: Based on the children’s descriptions of Abe hurting them, the police take them into protective custody; Abe emails Gerrish with more details of “cult”
• 14 November 2014: Sabine McNeill opens Dropbox file to store information she received from Ella; Charlotte Ward publishes e-book under pseudonym “Jacqui Farmer”
• 10 December 2014: Ella fires, re-hires, then re-fires legal team. They turn over all evidence, including confidential police videos, to Ella.
• 26 December 2014: Sabine blogs that this will be her “breakthrough case”
• 2 January 2015: Belinda’s associate seen handing out flyers about the case outside Royal Courts of Justice
• 13 January 2015: Mrs Justice Anna Pauffley becomes involved with care proceedings
• 26 January 2015: Sabine writes Ella’s Position Statement threatening “high-level embarrassment” if the children are not returned. She also writes to then-Home Secretary Theresa May, presenting “our offer NOT to expose this scandal in exchange for returning the children.” Sabine BCC’s this email, which contains videos of the children’s original allegations, to Henry Curteis of The Tap Blog. He publishes them online.
• 2 February 2015: Ella attempts to have the children write the judge saying they wish to come home. They refuse.
• 9 February 2015: Ella publishes list of accused cult members on YouTube
• 10 February 2015: Ella fails to attend court following injunctions against herself and Sabine
• 12 February 2015: Police come to question Ella; she flees her house and leaves the country
• 12 February 2015: Sabine flees the country to evade arrest
• 17 February 2015: Abe joins Belinda outside Royal Courts of Justice to protest children being in care; court attempts to serve a witness summons on him, but fails. He later leaves the country to join Ella in Spain
• 19 March 2015: Mrs Justice Pauffley reads judgement of her fact-finding hearing

The mother and her boyfriend

1. How do you know the children were coached to tell a story of imaginary abuse?
2. Is there any physical evidence to show that Abe forced the children to say what they did?
3. I heard that the police forced the kids to make those retraction statements. Is that true?
4. But why would Abe and Ella have done this? Ella already had custody of the children, so it can’t have been a ‘custody dispute’. What would motivate her to make up such terrible stories about her ex-partner?
5. The abuse the children described was so detailed and horrific, I can’t believe it’s not true. Would a mother really allow her children to be forced to talk about this if it weren’t true?
6. If the hoax was meant to target the father, why would Abe and Ella have included the “20 special children”, their parents, the teachers, and the clergy from Christ Church in the allegations?
7. I’ve heard that Abe and Ella tried to interfere with the police investigation. Is that true?
8. The children and Ella both mention that Ella’s oldest son was in the cult. Yet Ella and Abe never talk about him, and seem uninterested in rescuing him. Why?
9. Is it true that Ella had to take out a non-molestation order against RD? Doesn’t this prove he was violent toward her and her son?

Promoters of the hoax

1. Aside from Abraham Christie and Ella Draper, who was involved in promoting the hoax?
2. The videos of the children were released in February 2015. Is that when the hoax started?
3. Why did Abe and Ella contact Brian Gerrish in September 2014? What did they hope to achieve?
4. Who was Finnbarr, and why did he secretly record himself interviewing the children?
5. But why would anyone bother creating a hoax like this? What would the motive be?
6. If all this is true, why are none of the original Hampstead hoax promoters speaking to one another now?

The ‘cult’ tattoos

1. The children claimed in the videos that all the members of the cult had tattoos on their privates. Why couldn’t those people just go to the police, have themselves examined, and clear things up once and for all? I know I would!
2. Surely the children could not have made up all the demonic imagery they described—and drew! No child could know all that, unless they’d seen it with their own eyes.
3. But the children drew those pictures! Don’t you believe the children?
4. But all you’re saying is that you don’t believe the tattoos exist. How can you be so certain? After all, this cult has been around a very long time, and they are very, very good at covering up their activities.

The forensic evidence

1. Why was no forensic search conducted on RD’s flat?
2. Why didn’t the police get a warrant to search the church premises? If they’d done that, they might have found the drawers full of skulls that the children described, the secret tunnels, and the rooms where the secret rituals took place.
3. What about the East Finchley swimming pool? The children never retracted their allegations about what happened there, so why wasn’t the pool searched?
4. While we’re on the subject of evidence, can you explain to me how an entire school could shut down once a week so teachers and parents could rape children, kill babies, drink blood, and conduct mysterious rituals involving dancing with skulls, without ever getting caught or reported, and without leaving any trace of their activities?

The medical evidence

1. I’ve heard that the medical examinations proved conclusively that both children were sexually abused.
2. I’ve read Dr Hodes’ evidence, and I think it backs up the children’s allegations that they were abused multiple times per week by members of a Satanic cult.
3. Why was Dr Hodes’ evidence not used during the investigation to trigger arrests and seizure of phones and computers from those alleged to have abused the children?

The police investigation

1. Why didn’t the police perform a full investigation on the claims made by RD’s children?
2. Why were the recordings made at the home of Jean-Clement Yaohirou ignored by police?
3. What about the series of videos made on the way home from Morocco? Why were they not used as evidence by the police?
4. Why did the police release copies of the videos where DC Steve Martin interviews the two children?
5. Why were none of the suspects interviewed? And why were they not examined for evidence of scars, birthmarks, or tattoos?
6. Was RD tipped off by police prior to being interviewed? That would have given him time to destroy any evidence.
7. Why didn’t the police examine the father’s computers for evidence of ‘snuff movies’?
8. Why didn’t the police interview the ’20 special children’ named by RD’s children as having been abused by the cult?

The IPCC report on the police investigation

This page contains links to the following posts:

1. IPCC Reports: A guide for the dimwitted
2. IPCC Report vindicates Hoaxtead police investigation
3. IPCC Report offers a few surprises
4. IPCC Report: Massive holes in Abe & Ella’s arguments
5. IPCC Report: What about the tattoos?
6. Children’s retractions were valid: IPCC report
7. IPCC Report: Did police interview other victims?
8. IPCC Report: What DID the police do wrong?
9. Drifloud tries to trash IPCC report, scores own goal!

What about the videos?

1. Let’s start with a synopsis of the videos themselves
2. How could the children remember so much detail?
3. ‘I heard those children. There’s no way they were lying’.
4. ‘No child in the world could remember that much detail and recite it back from memory’.
5. ‘So you’re accusing those children of lying? Children don’t lie about abuse’.
6. Why did the police release copies of the videos where DC Steve Martin interviews the two children.
7. Why and how did all the videos of the children being interviewed, whether by Abe and Ella, by the police, or by Abe at Jean-Clement Yaohirou’s house, get released onto the internet?
8. Ella was interviewed by the police, so why didn’t she release videos of herself being interviewed? Was Abe interviewed?
9. I heard that a forensic linguistic analysis was done on the videos in which the children retracted their original statements. This professional analysis stated that the police were forcing the children to lie, so those statements weren’t valid.
10. I heard that there’s video evidence out there of Ella Draper participating in making child pornography. Is this true?

How we know it’s a hoax

1. ‘I’ve heard the videos those children made. They sounded so genuine, they gave so many details, I can’t believe they were lying’.
2. Is it true that Ella has now retracted part of her story? And if so, what does this mean?
3. How do the tattoo allegations actually help to disprove the hoax?
4. Why do the children never reveal any details of what the cult believes in?

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The items listed in red are questions we’re still working on. We’ll be inserting them into the FAQ tomorrow…and then, unless anyone can think of anything else we can do to make the thing more useful, we. Will. Be. Done.

(mic drop)