Hampstead SRA hoax timeline update, part 2

Last week we began the task of updating the timeline of the Hampstead SRA hoax. This is a continuation of that process, beginning with the events following Sabine McNeill’s involvement in the case in November 2014, and ending with the Pauffley judgment.

Our goal is to integrate information gleaned from Sabine’s 2018 trial, as well as other new material which has come to light. Ultimately, all of this will be posted on the blog’s FAQ, which is accessible via the bar at the top of the page. As always, feedback is welcome!

10 December 2014

Ella sacked, then re-hired, then re-sacked her legal team. They turned over a bundle of materials to her, including the video recordings of the police interviews which DC Martin had conducted with the children in September. Ella had previously approached Sabine McNeill to act as her McKenzie friend in her care proceedings as she tried to regain custody of her children. Now, Sabine and her friend Belinda McKenzie would take over as Ella’s “friendly advisors” in court.

21 December 2014

Sabine McNeill sent an email to a person named Brad. In the email, titled “How many hours of footage?” she said that she was asking for support. She said she was sharing the videos and wanted to know how to make a trailer for them. She also mentioned having contacted a police officer who she felt would confirm the credibility of the mother’s story.

“Russian TV will come on 11 January”, she wrote. “I may persuade Ella to pay for it”.

22 December 2014

Assisted by Belinda McKenzie, and having lost confidence that Judge Mayer would return her children to her, Ella filed for a judicial review.

23 December 2014

Judge Mayer transferred the case to Mrs Justice Anna Pauffley.

24 December 2014 (approx.)

Over Christmas, Ella entrusted Sabine with copies of the videos of the children. During her 2018 trial, Sabine stated that these were on CDs or DVDs.

26 December, 2014

Sabine posted on a now-deleted blog,

Regarding my social life with meaning, I can only hope that this case will become the breakthrough we’ve been working towards.

It took me quite a while to get my head, heart and strategic thinking in line with the necessities to respond to calls for court proceedings in the case of a Russian mum whose two children were taken by Barnet police on 11 September 2015 (sic)”.

2 January, 2015

Mary Rooney, a friend of Sabine’s and a Director of at least one of Belinda’s companies (the former Knight Foundation) was witnessed handing out leaflets regarding returning the children to their “Russian Mother” outside Southwark Crown Court. Ella’s care proceedings case was still in court at the time, and no decision had been made regarding the children.

4 January 2015

Four of the videos of P and Q appeared in Sabine’s Google Drive as of this date; more would follow.

At approximately this time, Sabine wrote to Barnet councillors, and uploaded links to the videos as the “most convincing evidence”. According to Sabine’s testimony at her 2018 trial, Barnet Council was the first agency to receive all the videos.

13 January, 2015

High Court judge Mrs Justice Pauffley became involved with the care proceedings.

26 January, 2015

Upon realising that Mrs Justice Pauffley would probably not be returning the two children to their mother, Sabine wrote a Position Statement for Ella to present at her 26 January hearing.

This statement contained a thinly veiled threat as to would happen if the children “were not returned to their mother and grandparents with immediate effect.” The consequence, according to this statement, would be “high level embarrassment.”

Sabine also wrote an email to Theresa May, then Home Secretary. This letter explicitly stated that the Position Statement was “our offer NOT to expose this scandal in exchange for returning the children.”

Sabine claims that she “accidentally” BCC’d this email, which contained the videos of the children making their initial allegations, to conspiracy blogger Henry Curteis of The Tap Blog. However, during Sabine’s 2018 trial, DC Steve Martin testified that the email to Theresa May contained no bcc field.

Curteis published the videos on 2 February 2015, and they quickly went viral, with more than 4 million people having viewed them by 10 March 2015. (see below)

On or about this date, Sabine also opened a petition on Change.org, titled “The Rt. Hon. Chris Grayling MP: Return the Whistleblower Kids and Abuse Survivors of a London School to Their Russian Family”. The petition contained a link which led to the videos on Sabine’s Google drive.

This petition received several thousand signatures before it was removed by Change.org for violating its terms of service.

2 February, 2015

During a contact visit with the children, Ella provided them with pens and paper and asked them to write a letter to the judge saying they wished to return home. Both children refused to do this. Ella was overheard swearing at the children in Russian, and the children appeared upset but still refused to co-operate with her plan. As a result of her behaviour, the local authority chose to suspend contact with the children for seven days. This would be Ella’s last contact with the children.

Also on 2 February, an article was published on the Henry Curteis’ Tap Blog, titled “Children describe Satanic murders they were forced to take part in”, and containing an email to then-Home Secretary Theresa May, along with a list of videos of P and Q.

The Tap Blog post included the videos made by Finnbarr Hagan. The original post has since been removed, but an archived version is available. However, we have chosen not to link to it as it contains the names of children and protected witnesses.

In the email, which Sabine now claims she “BCC’d accidentally”, she includes the following note: “(TAP – watch these two very brave children describing the awful things being done to them by their father and others. If they were on Youtube, they’d go viral. Someone should upload them)”.

4 February 2015

Parents named by Ella Draper in the written “witness statement” document which she sent to Jean-Clement Yaohirou, Brian Gerrish, and later Sabine, received an email from Christ Church Primary School telling them that unfounded, unpleasant rumours about the school were circulating. However, parents received no further details than this.

5 February 2015

The parents began to find false allegations online about themselves and their children. This information seemed to be coming primarily from two blogs: Tap NewsWire and Aangirfan.

9 February 2015

Ella read her “witness statement” aloud on a YouTube video, in which she revealed her false allegations about her children’s school, their teachers, and other pupils and their parents. In this statement she claimed that the headteacher was leading a “Satanist” cult from the school, and that children at the school were being regularly sexually abused. Her statement contained the home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and employment information of many of the alleged cult members. It also contained allegations that certain children “enjoyed” being sexually abused.

10 February 2015

Ella failed to attend court when “mandatory and prohibitory injunctions” were made against her. The injunctions specified that both she and Sabine were to remove from the internet all material related to the proceedings then under way. Neither complied.

12 February, 2015

Police came to Ella’s house to question her about her harassment of the father and other parents at Christ Church Primary School. Wishing to avoid arrest, Ella evaded police and fled the country.

According to the Pauffley judgment,

On 12 February, police officers attended at Ms Draper’s address. Her car was on the driveway. A gentleman spoke with the police through the letter box and indicated that he was the mother’s lawyer. The police explained they were there to discuss possible offences committed under s.4 of the Harassment Act 1997. They were denied entry to the property. Whilst the police were waiting for the means to secure a forced entry, three people climbed out of a first floor window, ran along the roof line of three or four houses and climbed down onto some nearby garages where they disappeared from sight.

14 February 2015

In a Change.org update, which notified supporters that she had left the country, Sabine said she had taken a plane to Berlin. She stated that she had done this to evade arrest.

Following her departure from the UK, Sabine was informed by a person named Chris Alexander that there was an Interpol warrant out for her arrest. Her solicitor confirmed this.

Alexander had been introduced to her as a friend of Maurice Kirk, who, like him, owned and flew his own planes. After informing her of the Interpol warrant, he offered to fly Sabine to the Philippines, an offer she refused.

17 February, 2015

Abraham Christie was seen outside the front entrance of the Royal Courts of Justice, as part of a group led by Belinda McKenzie, which was campaigning for the “return of the Whistleblower Kids”.

A witness summons was issued requiring his attendance at court to answer questions on February 20. However, attempts to serve the summons were unsuccessful. He later fled to Spain as well. He and Ella lived together in Spain until 2018, when he moved out.

He is currently living in Morocco, and continues to attempt to use the Hampstead hoax as a means of promoting his hemp business.

20 February 2015

In a group Skype conversation, Sabine stated that she planned to release the police videos of the ABE interviews with the children.

21 February, 2015

In the comments section on one of her many blogs, Sabine states her intention to publish the police ABE interviews with the children.

Shortly afterward, the videos go online, and like the first set of interview videos, rapidly go viral.

24 February 2015

In an update on her Change.org petition, Sabine McNeill introduced “this remarkable video” made by a person later identified by the pseudonym “Jacqui Farmer” (later revealed by Hoaxtead Research to be Charlotte Alton Ward). Sabine urged readers to “share, share, share”, and said that “once this is over, I can go back to my flat and continue publishing” about the Hampstead case.

28 February 2018

In a Change.org update, Sabine urged people to look at the videos of the children, and to “question all the sceptics”. At that time she also said that “extreme situations require extreme actions”.

3 March 2015

Sabine posted an update to Change.org called “Hampstead horror action plan” suggesting that people paint dolls with red nail polish, attach tags directing people to the Whistleblower Kids blog, and post them to businesses in Hampstead.

15 March 2015

At Sabine’s 2018 trial, it was stated that Sabine registered the domain for her Whistleblower Kids blog on 15 March 2015. However, Sabine stated that she began publishing on that blog prior to that date.

19 March 2015

Mrs Justice Pauffley read her judgment at the High Court. Her final summary of findings was:

• Neither child has been sexually abused by any of the following – [redacted], teachers at Christchurch Primary School Hampstead, the parents of students at that school, the priest at the adjacent church, teachers at any of the Hampstead or Highgate schools, members of the Metropolitan Police, social workers employed by the London Borough of Camden, officers of Cafcass or anyone else mentioned by Ms Draper or Mr Christie.
• The children’s half brother, his father and stepmother – Will and Sarah Draper – are likewise exonerated of any illicit or abusive acts involving the children.
• There was no satanic or other cult at which babies were murdered and children were sexually abused.
• All of the material promulgated by Ms Draper now published on the internet is nothing other than utter nonsense.
• The children’s false stories came about as the result of relentless emotional and psychological pressure as well as significant physical abuse. Torture is the most accurate way to describe what was done by Mr Christie in collaboration with Ms Draper.
• Both children were assaulted by Mr Christie by being hit with a metal spoon on multiple occasions over their head and legs, by being pushed into walls, punched, pinched and kicked. Water was poured over them as they knelt semi-clothed.
• The long term emotional and psychological harm of what was done to the children is incalculable. The impact of the internet campaign is likely to have the most devastating consequences for P and Q.

By the time the judgment was handed down, it’s estimated that more than four million people had seen the videos of P and Q.