Sabine gave evidence to IICSA Truth Project

From our Department of WTAF?!: An article in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph revealed that Sabine McNeill, currently serving nine years in prison for stalking and multiple violations of a July 2016 restraining order, gave evidence to the Truth Project run by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).

According to the article,

Remember that Sabine and Neelu were issued restraining orders by Judge Worsley following their trial for witness intimidation in July 2016, and that on 17 October 2016, the day before she attended the Home Affairs Select Committee’s “quizzing of Professor Alexis Jay, who had just taken over the inquiry”, Sabine had pleaded guilty to having violated that restraining order.

The following month, according to the article, Sabine was “invited to give testimony to the Truth Project, a part of IICSA, at a hearing in Cardiff in November 2016, and that she had prepared a lengthy document on the case”.

Given that this would have constituted a (rather large and ugly) violation of her restraining order, it’s probably not surprising that she did not boast about it publicly; had she done so, it would have no doubt been raised at her 2018 trial.

More to the point, though, it’s surprising that nobody at the IICSA considered that Sabine’s “evidence” about the Hampstead case had already been rubbished by Mrs Justice Pauffley in a 2015 High Court judgment; nor that prior to that judgment Sabine had been made subject to a mandatory injunction prohibiting her from spreading her lies further than she already had; nor even that four months prior to the Cardiff hearing, Sabine had been made subject to a restraining order prohibiting her from making her false allegations.

How did nobody notice any of this?

Sabine applied for Core Participant status in the Westminster strand of the Inquiry in September 2017, and her application was rejected on 31 January 2018.

Her application to the Inquiry, in which she apparently cited her “insider” knowledge of the Hampstead case, was in patent violation of the 2016 restraining order, which stated that she must not “make public in any way, including on the internet…any allegations of cannibalism, sexual child abuse or satanism at any time” in relation to the church and school involved in the case.

At the time when the Notice of Determination was made public, Sabine was on very strict bail conditions which prohibited access to the internet, but nonetheless she seems to have known about the rejection, as she said she had attended the Church of England Synod in February 2018 with a view to finding a solicitor who might be able to help her gain CP status.

Under oath, Sabine said she had registered the Hampstead case in the early days of the IICSA, during the tenure of Dame Lowell Goddard, and that she wanted to know whether they had a policy for whistle-blowers such as herself.

Despite her claim that she wanted to gain CP status, which implies that she knew she had been rejected, she said that although she had had email contact with Dame Goddard, she had been unable to determine her status vis à vis the Inquiry.

Surprisingly, the reason given for Sabine’s rejection was not that she was spouting outright fantastical lies which had been dismissed by the High Court, nor that she was under a restraining order which prohibited her from participating.

Rather, Professor Jay wrote,

I am not satisfied that Ms McNeill fulfils the criteria in Rule 5(2) or that there are other good reasons to designate her as a core participant. The application is put on the basis that Ms McNeill has received information from others relevant to alleged child sexual abuse and the alleged existence of a cult in Hampstead said to be connected with Hampstead Christchurch (sic), and that she can provide information about the actions of a number of agencies, including councils and the police, in relation to these allegations. Ms McNeill expressly states that she is not aware of evidence relating to child sexual abuse by ‘Westminster personalities’ but says that the harassment which she has experienced can only be explained by orders ‘from “high up”‘.…

The Westminster investigation is, as set out in the Definition of Scope, concerned with allegations of child sexual abuse involving current and/or former Members of Parliament, senior civil servants, government advisers and/or members of the intelligence agencies (collectively ‘people of public prominence associated with Westminster’). The allegations to which Ms McNeill refers do not concern allegations involving ‘people of public prominence associated with Westminster’ and accordingly do not fall within the scope of the Westminster investigation.

I am accordingly not satisfied that Ms McNeill fulfills the criteria in Rule 5.2 as a person who played, or may have played, a direct and significant role in relation to the matters to which the Westminster investigation relates, or that she has a significant interest in an important aspect of such matters or may be subject to explicit or significant criticism during the inquiry proceedings or in the report, or in any interim report. I do not therefore designate her as a core participant in this investigation.

I will keep the scope of the investigation and the designation of core participants under review and further invitations to apply for core participant status may be made as the investigation proceeds. I should add that I shall consider any application which Ms McNeill may make in future to be designated as a core participant in any other investigation.

In other words, it wasn’t that Sabine was a malicious troll who was spreading lies based on information extracted under torture from two young children…it was that she did not have information directly relevant to the Westminster strand of the Inquiry which led to her rejection.

Makes one ponder, doesn’t it?