Gerrish admits: ‘Involved’ with Hampstead SRA hoax from ‘earliest days’

Confirming suspicions raised by this blog for months now, Brian Gerrish has finally admitted during his UK Column broadcast of 5 April 2018 that he was “involved” with the Hampstead hoax from its “earliest days”. He has even stated that he interviewed RD’s eight-year-old son.

It had long been assumed by the UK troofer community that Gerrish had only become involved in the case after Sabine McNeill published the private videos of the children online in early February 2015, but in his recent “newscast” Gerrish said:

I’m very happy to say on air that having been involved with that family in the earliest days and spoken to the little boy—I didn’t speak to the girl—I have no doubt that that abuse case is factually true, the abuse of those children under horrific circumstances did take place. 

This admission adds further weight to the argument that the Hampstead SRA hoax was carefully planned from the outset, and included a publicity element that would have made use of Gerrish’s online profile as a trusted figure amongst those in the UK community of “alt-news” believers.

What does Gerrish’s admission mean?

Readers may remember that on 11 September 2014, Abraham and Ella sent an email to Brian Gerrish, in which they gave details of the alleged cult.

This letter was sent late in the evening, immediately after RD’s children were taken into protective custody by police, after Child P admitted that Abe beat them. Abe would later describe the email as a “plea for help”:

As we have previously shown, this email made its way from Brian Gerrish to the police, via a circuitous route. Its contents were identical to an email which the police had already received via Jean-Clement Yaohirou, and it confirmed to police that Abe and Ella were attempting to publicise the case.

However, the letter does not stand on its own. If it were an introductory letter to Mr Gerrish, one would expect it to start with some background information; as it is, the letter is more like a laundry list of material which Abe and Ella judged might be newsworthy.

We know that Finn Hagan, a person from Glastonbury who is associated with Brian Gerrish, was sent to London to conduct interviews with the children on 8 September 2014. His recorded interview with Child P (the nine-year-old girl) lasted about 20 minutes in all, and was more in-depth than his five-minute conversation with Child Q (the eight-year-old boy).

This makes sense given what we now know: that Brian Gerrish had already interviewed the boy, and only needed Finn Hagan to interview the girl so he could compare their stories.

When and where did Gerrish meet the children?

In the leaked police interview videos, we find the following curious exchange between the interviewing officer and Child Q. This was recorded on 11 September, and was a follow-up to the interview of 5 September:

DC Martin: So I heard you.  Your mum said you’re starting a new school this week.  Is that right?

Q: Yes, we’re starting a new school.

DCM: Are you?  What one are you gonna go to?

Q: I don’t know.  We are choosing one.

DCM: Oh, are you?

Q: Yeah.

DCM: Have you seen any you like?

Q: Yeah.

DCM: Yeah?  What one?

Q: Do you know Devon?

DCM: Devon?

Q: Yeah

DCM: As in down in Devon near the seaside?

Q: Yeah.

DCM: Oh right!  That’s a long way away from here isn’t it?

Q: Yeah.

DCM: Yeah?

Q: Yeah, we went there.

DCM: Did you?

Q: Yeah and also, like, Glastonbury.

DCM: Glastonbury? 

Q: Glasonbury.

DCM: Glastonbury [laughs]  Oh right.  Its all the way down there you like?

Q: Yeah

DCM: Oh, OK. 

Q: I like Glasonbury much more, better than Devon.

DCM: Why is that?

Q: Its much more fun there.

DCM: You think?

Q: Yeah.

DCM: OK.  So, and who would you move down there with?  Do  you know who would go with you?

Q: No.

Glastonbury and Devon seem like strange and somewhat arbitrary choices for new schools for the children, especially since Abraham and Ella had already stated their plan to flee back to Morocco to live.

However, we know that several of Abe’s friends, including early hoax promoter Araya Soma, lived in Glastonbury, which also happened to be Finn Hagan’s home base; and Brian Gerrish is located in Plymouth, Devon.

Given that Q had agreed that he’d been in “Devon near the seaside”, it seems most likely that at some point between 5–8 September 2014, Abe and Ella had hoiked the kids all the way from London to Plymouth to introduce them to Mr Gerrish and put them through their paces. This would be, as it were, an audition for the online publicity campaign which was meant to follow.

Knowing that Q had been easier to “convince” of the cult details than his sister, and was able to recite the details of the hoax more fluidly and believably, Abe and Ella would have chosen to let him recite the details to Brian Gerrish. They would have wanted to make best use of their time with Gerrish.

However, whether they ran out of time, or had to leave early for some other reason, it seems that Gerrish found it necessary to send his deputy, Finn Hagan, to London to complete the interview with P. His job was to record the interview and send it to Gerrish, which he did.

However, Abe and Ella now had a problem: how would they keep the children from telling the police that they’d been travelling around the countryside talking about the case?

Since the children were scheduled to meet with police for a follow-up interview on 11 September, Abe and Ella told them a cover story: they were going to Plymouth and Glastonbury to choose a new school for them. That way, if the children mentioned the trip, there’d be less chance of spilling the beans when they spoke to the cops.

The last thing Abe and Ella wanted was for the police to get wind of their plan to turn the hoax into an online cash cow; this also explains with they were utterly livid when they discovered that Gerrish had “betrayed” them by passing their email along to Bill Maloney and Jonathan Wedger, so that it ended up on DC Steve Martin’s desk on 18 September.

A gigantic publicity stunt

In a post two months ago, we revealed that the “Gerrish email” provided the police with confirmation that the children’s early allegations of Satanic ritual abuse had been part of an elaborate hoax:

If Ella and Abe had all this information about the alleged cult, why had they not immediately reported it to the police? Why would they have sent this information to Gerrish instead? And why did they send it to Gerrish within hours of the children being taken into police custody? If their aim was to shut down a cult, why would they interfere in the investigation in this way?

Could it have been because they were in the process of attempting to engineer a gigantic publicity stunt?

While the bulk of the police investigation had already taken place by the time the Gerrish email reached DC Martin’s desk, the email would have provided the proverbial icing on the cake. It would have demonstrated conclusively that this case, as Ella would later admit, had never been meant to reach the police and CPS. It was a hoax through and through.

And sure enough, in the closing pages of the CRIS report, we find this notation:

By the end of the police investigation, the Gerrish email had made one thing very clear: the police were onto Abraham. They understood that this wasn’t about “saving children”, but about attracting attention from the conspiracy community.

What did Gerrish offer Ella and Abraham?

In an interview with Richie Allen, none other than Danielle La Verité claimed that Gerrish had offered Abe and Ella publicity, in exchange for editorial control of the story:

DLV: Now the UK Column, when Ella went to the UK Column, they offered her full protection for those children. And Brian Gerrish and the other people at the Column…

Richie Allen: When you say he offered full protection now, you know I have a lot of time for the UK Column, but how could Brian Gerrish protect anybody?

DLV: Well, in the sense that what they were going to do was release the videos without the children’s faces being seen…

Richie Allen: Right, I’m with you.

DLV: Yes, so the children had protection, which they should have had, because now these children will spend the rest of their lives being the two kids from the internet that talked about ritualistic child abuse. Their lives could be ruined because of this, regardless of…this is…it’s child abuse continued, as far as I’m concerned. 

(This video was deleted when Richie Allen’s YouTube channel was removed.)

While it initially seemed likely that Gerrish would help Abe and Ella turn their hoax into a viral hit online, Finn Hagan witnessed a couple of things during his trip to London which could have influenced Gerrish’s decision as to whether this case might be too hot to handle:

• Finn was an eye-witness to Abe’s panic when he discovered that the police officer assigned to investigate the hoax was the same one who’d investigated his assault on his own teen-aged son.
• And Finn would also have reported that Abe and Ella were making serious noises about fleeing the country.

Neither of these things would serve to instil confidence that Abe and Ella would make believable, reliable, and sympathetic characters in the fiction Gerrish would be promoting. There were doubts as to whether they could be brought to heel, which would need to happen if Gerrish was to make anything of their story. As any PR agent will attest, the first rule for clients is “do it my way”.

However, Belinda and Sabine had already discovered that Abe and Ella had a nasty tendency to strike out on their own—instead of taking the children directly to see Gerrish as planned, for example, Abe had taken them on a late-night visit to his brother-in-law, Jean-Clement, who had inconveniently decided to report the case to the police. This had unleashed a criminal investigation in a case which had originally been intended as a family court matter.

We know that Gerrish rejected the story, as by November 2014 Araya Soma (remember her?) was complaining about it: By the time Gerrish decided to begin publicising the hoax, it had grown into an untameable monster, perhaps proving that he’d been right to give it a swerve in September 2014. However, that doesn’t stop him from claiming now that he has “no doubt that that abuse case is factually true, the abuse of those children under horrific circumstances did take place”.

Given Gerrish’s early involvement in the case, we hope and expect that the police will want to interview him. Stay tuned….