Did Ella really want her children back?

Last week we took a look at a new-old audio recording made by Abraham Christie and Ella Draper back in the days when they still harboured a naïve belief that they might be able to salvage the Hampstead hoax dumpster fire and turn it to their advantage.

As with much of the evidence concerning this hoax, this audio contains layers of information. In our previous post, we discussed how in their utterly wasted state, Abe and Ella were revealing more than they might have liked to about the way in which the Hampstead hoax had originated.

On this pass, we’re going to examine what the audio potentially reveals about the couple’s motivations, and what their anger with Sabine could mean.

In the audio, Abe and Ella take turns ridiculing Sabine, who they blame for having released the videos of the two children made en route to London from Morocco. Just a quick review of the relevant segment:

Abe: I’ve got it…

Ella: No, come on…

Abe: No, I’ve told you, hemp gives you the…opens your third eye.

Ella: (flirtatiously) That’s riiiight!

Abe: See through all subterfuge.

Ella: That’s right!

Abe: See through Sabine McNeill’s motives…for releasing…for releasing the um…the videos. And the rest of the (mumbles)…

Ella: Yeah…it’s a great…the Sabine McNeill Show!

Abe: THE SABINE MCNEILL SHO00000000000W!

Ella: (laughs then sings operatically) Woowooowooooo……

Abe: Heh heh heh…but Sabine, you didn’t cry on this interview! She’s setting up another load of crying for the next interview.

Ella: (giggles)

Abe: Yeah, cos I’m going to be at the European courts of…whatever it is…

Ella: Mm-hmm…

Abe: Nah, she’s good. Sabine’s good. She’s a great performer…(lowers voice) yeah, she’s a bitch…releasing the video with the information, she shouldn’t have done it…especially after we explicitly asked her not to…’Oh, I emailed you twice, (inaudible)…’ Oh, so what? did that mean you asked me whether you could release the information or not? No. You released it because Abraham came back, and he said, we were going to pixelate the faces, we were going to edit the videos, (inaudible) because we had already discussed it three or four months later…

Ella: That’s right.

Abe: Uh, earlier, which she was not party to, these discussions you were not party to…

Ella: No, but even, even later, it’s been discussed many t—…well, quite a few times, uh, between those guys, and everybody agreed that it’s not time to release that, any part to release…

Abe: Riiight.

Ella: And to only talk about the abuse, the sexual abuse…

Abe: That’s right!

Ella: And so, everybody knows the case, and they can add more layers of information.

Sabine was disobeying Ella’s orders

During Sabine McNeill’s cross-examination by Miranda Moore QC on 5 December, Moore made it clear that in releasing the videos when she did, Sabine was going against the wishes of Ella, who had given them to her in December 2014.

From the summary of that day’s proceedings, we find:

Noting that she had asked Sabine previously about Ella Draper’s consent to publish the videos and other material online, Moore said, “You said that she had never told you to take it down”. She read an email from Ella, dated 8 February 2015:

Dear Sabine,

Following yesterday’s meeting and discussion of your decision to post the videos and other material online and share this information with parties unknown to me after I explicitly asked you not to do so on at least two separate occasions: during the Saturday meeting at 31.01.15 and also during private telephone conversation please be kind enough to return all my children’s case material, including all videos, documents. 

I much appreciate all the work and assistance you’ve provided for me so far and you are welcome to participate on the condition that you will consult with me and the group before making such decisions in the future. 

Thank you

Yours sincerely,

Ella

We’ve already looked at the likelihood that while Sabine’s primary mission was to blackmail Mrs Justice Pauffley into returning the children to their mother, Abraham and Ella were more interested in sprucing the videos up and using them as part of a concerted campaign to promote their hemp business.

But looking at it from a different angle, it struck us that there’s another interpretation, which does not necessarily contradict the first.

Ella initially approached Sabine in November 2014 and asked her to help her get her children back. They had been taken into protective custody after revealing that they had been abused by Abraham with Ella’s approval, and this was not how Ella had intended things to play out.

Sabine was excited by this, and began making all sorts of plans. She contacted somebody named Brad about making a trailer to go with the videos, and wrote on her blog about how 2015 would be a breakthrough year, a year of victory.

Clearly, she intended to release the videos as part of her strategy (ill-conceived as it was) to get the children back for Ella, and in the process make herself look like a heroine. Remember, Sabine fully believed that the “court of public opinion” was all-powerful, and could be harnessed to bend the courts of law to her will.

Why, then, did Ella seemingly get cold feet, and demand that Sabine return the videos just when the videos were about to go viral on the internet, the case was on everybody’s lips, and the court of public opinion was swinging overwhelmingly in Ella’s favour? Wasn’t this what she wanted?

Perhaps, just perhaps, Ella really was not as eager as she appeared to get her children back. This sounds almost heretical, we know.

But consider: for Ella and Abraham, those videos represented something quite different—an opportunity to demonstrate to the world, through the use of two angelic-looking children, that the product they were selling could be used to eliminate the effects of “trauma-based mind control”. This was advertising gold.

When Ella engaged Sabine, it had been with the intention of getting the children returned to her, which would have been the ultimate poke in the eye for her ex-partner. She’d allowed Sabine and Belinda McKenzie to go through the motions of filing for a judicial review, attending court with her, and helping support her as a litigant in person.

But when push came to shove, and Sabine decided to use the videos as her nuclear option, she would do so without her client’s approval or permission.

Once Sabine had released the videos onto the internet, with her exhortations of “Share, share, share!”, they immediately lost their value to Abraham and Ella. The videos were now tainted—they would be forever associated with allegations of SRA, and had been rendered useless as part of the planned hemp-advertising campaign.

Sabine’s grand plan to leverage massive public outrage and protest into the return of the children, was of no interest to Ella. Her enthusiasm for having the children returned was far less pressing to her than her interest in using them to promote her and Abraham’s business.

After all, fun’s fun, but the other stuff’s money.