Frequently asked questions: The hoax timeline

Prelude to the hoax: 2008–2014

Brewing storm: Court orders made and breached

2008–2013:

Following the breakdown of their relationship, Ella Gareeva Draper and her ex-partner had been to court more than nine times, as her ex-partner (who cannot be named here due to several court orders) sought to have access to their two children.

Ella used every possible means to avoid this, including making several false allegations against her ex-partner in an effort to cut him off completely from the children. This is alluded to in Mrs Justice Pauffley’s fact-finding judgement of 19 March, 2015:

Over the course of the next six years (after 2008), there was never a time when the children’s contact with their father proceeded smoothly. Countless returns to court achieved very little. If there was an attempt to achieve judicial continuity it failed miserably. Between November 2010 and August 2014 when the case was pending at First Avenue House, High Holborn it drifted between no fewer than seven different judges. None of the nine hearings resulted in a considered judgment on the basis of oral evidence. The essential cause of the problems was never the subject of judicial determination.

2010:

The mother made a non-molestation order against the father, in order to prevent him contacting her. For those unfamiliar with this term, a non-molestation order does not require that any offence was committed. It simply means that one person does not wish to have contact with another.

Between 2011 and 2012, the children had no contact with their father.

2012:

The father believed that he would never be allowed to see his children again. He decided to move to the United States to pursue his acting career and make a fresh start. There he would remain, until late 2013/early 2014.

Abraham Christie meets Brian Gerrish

June 2012:

Abraham Christie, a man with a long string of criminal charges and convictions to his name, attended a London event sponsored by InfoWars, the conspiracy-pushing online radio network belonging to American Alex Jones. This conference was attended by UK-based conspiracy theorists like Brian Gerrish, Ian R. Crane, and others.

Christie, whose earlier gold-trading business had failed, had started a new business in February 2012, trading in silver. At the InfoWars event, he was filmed presenting one of the speakers, Max Keiser, with a one-kilogram ingot of silver, then shouting the name of his new business to the camera. Christie claims to have contacted Gerrish at this event.

At a similar event in November 2012, Christie met Finnbarr Hagan, an associate of Gerrish’s and a conspiracy purveyor in his own right.

Early signs of abuse, neglect by mother

2013

According to the CRIS report which would later record the police investigation, the children were referred to social services because of “concerns over the children being left on their own as being heard crying. At the time Ella did not appear to have a partner”.

In addition, “there were concerns over the children not having enough food as they were seen to steal food from other children and from the school bins”.

Parental access dispute heats up

Early 2014

Witnesses claim to have seen Ella and the father engaged in a dispute in the McDonalds restaurant in Hampstead. They say that Ella attempted to serve the father with a court application to remove the children from the UK, and that he in turn served her with a court application ensuring that she could not take them. Ella was visibly shaken by this encounter, our witnesses say.

In the Jean-Clement Yaohirou recording transcript, Ella confirms that this was the case.

So I go to him and say I’m thinking to move to the south of France….I enquired with solicitors much, much before, you know, what if I wanted to move out of the country, what the steps would be. So I give him a call saying that I’m thinking to do that, you know, and he says no, he’s not going to allow it to happen, so okay, I knew my next step will be, like, to go to court. However, on the 4th of September, I think it was a Friday, the next working day he went and applied for prohibit steps, saying…that I’m trying to take them out of the country….I’ve been abusive to children, and another application he made for the residence of children at that time.

During the September 2014 police investigation, police confirmed that the father had applied for full custody of the children at the time when Ella proposed to take them out of the country.

May 2014

The father applied for contact with his children for the first time since the previous October. He had not seen them since 2012, as he had been out of the country. Keep this timing in mind when we get to the allegations against him.

Abraham Christie

May 2014

In the same month that the father applied for contact with the children, Ella Draper met Abraham Christie, whose extensive criminal record includes theft, fraud, drugs, firearms offences, and battery.

Abraham is a known child abuser who by his own admission had recently been released from prison.

He admitted to having attacked his teen-aged son in mid-May 2014, and his step-daughter has called him “the step-father from hell”, as she had witnessed him beating her younger brother until the child wet himself in terror. The child’s sin: not reading a passage aloud correctly.

In the CRIS report, Christie is listed as having “convictions for offences against his own children”:

Abraham moved into Ella’s house in Hampstead, calling himself the family’s “nutrition advisor”. He began strictly regulating the children’s vegetarian diet, insisting that they adhere to raw veganism, and that they must not eat any foods he deemed “poison” or “junk”.

4 June 2014

Abraham Christie became involved in a heated verbal altercation with the staff at Christ Church School, in which he shouted at them that they were “poisoning” the children by allowing them to eat “off-limits” food.

During Sabine McNeill’s 2018 trial, in response to a question about Christie a parent witness stated:

The parents at Christ Church Primary School (CCPS) were aware of his presence, describing him as a “foreboding person” who seemed “malevolent and overbearing” when he appeared on the school’s playground. They stated that he did not behave “the way people expected in a playground”. He had on at least two occasions appeared shirtless, and the caretaker had asked him not to do this. 

Later, the caretaker as well as parents who had asked Abraham to keep his shirt on would be named as “cult members” by Ella and Abe.

August 2014

In early August, Abraham called and left messages for his brother-in-law, Metropolitan Police Special Constable Jean-Clement Yaohirou, saying he had information regarding the abuse of children. At that time, Jean-Clement said, Abe was not offering specific information, but was trying to “give him justification”. Abe claimed that a church, a school in Hampstead, and a police station in Haringey were involved.

Jean-Clement asked whether he had evidence, and Abe said he would get some.

Abe and Ella travelled with the children, first to Gibraltar and then to Morocco, where they stayed in a riad belonging to a friend of Christie’s.

According to Mrs Justice Pauffley’s fact-finding judgment of 19 March 2015, while they were in Morocco

…the children’s minds were filled with ever more elaborate, fantastical and sexually explicit stories. Over time, more and more detail was supplied to the central core of the fabricated story. ‘Brainstorming’ brought about expanded versions of events. More and more individuals were named as participants within the cult. Venues for abusive activities grew in number, spread across Hampstead and Highgate. Ever more sexually explicit details were woven in to the fabric of the fantasies in an attempt to make the children’s accounts believable and seemingly authentic.By the time the children arrived at the airport for the journey back to England, at Mr Christie’s and Ms Draper’s instigation, they were able to ‘speak to camera’ about the stories concocted during the brainstorming. The obvious purpose of the film clips was to provide ‘proof.’ It was part of a deliberate plan by Mr Christie and Ms Draper. The children do as they are told. They do so forthrightly, without inhibition and with apparent conviction.

In the videos made en route home from Morocco, both children look tired. Bruising and a cut are visible on the little girl’s face.

Implementing the hoax: September 2014

4 September 2014

First thing upon returning to London, either Abraham or Ella called Brian Gerrish, a UK-based conspiracy promoter who runs a YouTube channel called “UK Column” from Plymouth, Devon. They arranged to meet with Gerrish at a later date.

That evening Abe took the children to his brother-in-law Jean-Clement Yaohirou’s house. Ella returned to her own home for a shower, and joined them later. While at Jean-Clement’s house, Abraham put the children through their paces, getting them to repeat the stories they had told on camera the previous day.

Jean-Clement audio-recorded the entire conversation. (This transcript reveals a great deal about the hoax, and is required reading for anybody who is serious about researching it further.)

5 September 2014 

Alarmed about what he had heard from the children, Jean-Clement called Scotland Yard immediately after they had left, in the very early morning of 5 September. He gave a copy of the audio recording to a friend for safe-keeping.

This friend, upon listening to the recording, recognised the name of one of the people who was being accused of belonging to the “cult”.

According to Detective Inspector Cannon, who testified during the fact-finding hearing,

This friend had looked at the video and recognised one of the parents when they had said the name of one of the parents that they were talking about, and he called up this chap who then took a copy of this video and contacted us. He also contacted, I’m not sure if it was his lawyer or someone, but then we got the copy of that from him.

As an aside, it seems highly unlikely that a guilty person would immediately insist on reporting such an incriminating piece of evidence to the police. However, you will not hear this from Ella, Abraham, or those who support them.

Mrs Justice Pauffley observed that despite the recording’s key importance to the case, it was not reviewed by police until after the police investigation had been closed.

She said,

I say no more at this stage than that the police and social services inquiry could have taken an entirely different course if attention had been given to those recordings. At the very least, the questions asked of P and Q at interview would have been directed towards other areas of interest.

By suggesting the investigation would have been “directed towards other areas of interest”, she means that Ella and Abraham would have been questioned and possibly charged based on the contents of the Jean-Clement audio recording.

Police launch investigation

Also on 5 September, the Child Abuse Investigation Team (CAIT) based at Barnet police station launched their investigation into the allegations. Over the course of their investigation they conducted three ABE (Achieving Best Evidence) interviews with each child on the 5th, 11th, and 17th of September.

Contrary to popular belief, Abraham and Ella did not initially go to the police with their concerns about the children.

Rather, the police, alerted by Jean-Clement and the above-named accused parent, went to see them. Abraham and Ella were not happy about this.

The CRIS report notes:

The family showed concerns about speaking to Police and eventually allowed the officers entry. They spoke to the two children who started to give some graphic disclosures. 

The meeting was stopped…this disclosure needed to be in ABE format.

This was explained to [redacted] and Abraham who did not wish to attend the Police Station without Special Const. Yaohirou present.

6–8 September 2014

At some point between 6–8 September, Abraham, Ella, and the children drove to Glastonbury and Devon, ostensibly to look for new schools for the children.

According to Gerrish, who lives in Devon, he interviewed “the boy” in the “earliest days” of the case, but he does not specify a date. He has claimed that he did not meet the children in person, but spoke to the child by phone. However, Gerrish has admitted to meeting Abraham and Ella “in September”.

Glastonbury, meanwhile, is the home of Araya Soma, a friend of Abraham’s via his former girlfriend. It was also the home of Finnbarr Hagan, who Abraham would later identify as a “scout” for Gerrish’s UK Column.

7 September 2014

Knowing that the police had scheduled a drive-round to enable the children to identify their father’s house and other sites of interest to the investigation, Abe and Ella took the children on a “practice” drive-round by taxi.

Members of the public reported to police that they had seen a female child and Abraham Christie (on one occasion confirmed by CCTV). Abraham was heard saying that he had just been released from prison and was discussing decapitation. The girl appeared distressed.

The driver reported that Abe had told him, “You know she’s a baby killer”. Then, talking to the girl, he said, “What do you do after you kill babies?”

The girl replied, “I eat them”.

“What do you do after you eat them?”

“I drink their blood”.

“What does your dad do to you?”

“Sex”.

The driver was concerned about the children’s mental health in the face of Abraham’s badgering, and reported the incident to the police.

8 September 2014

Finnbarr Hagan visited Abe and Ella at Ella’s house in Hampstead. While he was there, he talked to the girl, secretly filming their conversation as he did so. He also interviewed the boy briefly.

During his attempted interview with the boy, Finnbarr was surprised by an approaching adult, and shoved his phone into his pocket, still turned on. In doing this, he audio-recorded Abe discussing his concern that DC Steve Martin was involved with this case.

DC Martin knew Abe as a child abuser, having dealt with him when he assaulted his teen-aged son. In the audio recorded by Finbarr, Abraham can be heard trying not to panic at this coincidence.

Also on 8 September, the police conducted their drive-round with the two children, who had previously stated that they would be able to identify their father’s house in this way. Neither was able to identify his house.

9 September 2014

The CAIT team received an email from “the informant”—Abraham’s brother-in-law Jean-Clement Yaohirou—which was logged in the CRIS report.

This information, Jean-Clement said, had come to him from Ella Draper, and comprised a detailed list of names, places, and alleged cult activities. It begins “Main action is happening in Christchurch (sic) with at least another 10, possibly more schools involved”.

Children taken into protective custody

11 September 2014

On 11 September, following an ABE interview in which the little girl reported that Abraham Christie had hit them and that their mother hadn’t cared and had indeed approved of his abuse of the children, both children were made the subjects of a Police Protection Order (PPO), and were removed from Ella’s custody.

The same day, approximately three hours after the children were taken into custody, Abe and Ella emailed Brian Gerrish of the UK Column.

As mentioned above, Abraham had met Gerrish in 2012, and he and Ella had spoken with him by phone the night they arrived home from Morocco. The 11 September email contained no introductory information, but begins, “Main action is happening in Christchurch (sic) with at least another 10, possibly more schools involved”…

The contents of the email are identical to the one which Jean-Clement Yaohirou had received from Ella, which he had sent to the CAIT team on 9 September.

In this copy, posted on Twitter, “Drifloud” demands that Gerrish (@briangukc) explain why he did not immediately begin publicising the information in the email. Gerrish has never answered this question.

Of particular interest is that while the email was originally sent to Gerrish, it ended up, via a circuitous route, back on the desk of DC Steve Martin. Rather than going immediately to press with this seemingly explosive story, Gerrish forwarded the email to his friend and fellow conspiracy-spreader, Bill Maloney. Maloney in turn forwarded it to his friend, a police officer named Jon Wedger.

Using his personal email account, “Nathan Wedger” at <numnut2009@hotmail.co.uk, Wedger forwarded the email to another officer, PC Paul Armstrong, who in turn sent it to Anna Bewley, who worked in the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) at the Met.

From there, the email proceeded to DC Victoria Barnes at the Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse (SOECA) unit.

DC Barnes recognised the details contained in the Gerrish email as identical to those in a case currently under investigation by the CAIT, and so she forwarded it to DC Steve Martin on 18 September 2014.

This clarified for police that Abe and Ella were planning to use the children’s story as the basis for an online publicity campaign, targeting people who believed in the sorts of conspiracy theories touted by Gerrish.

12 September 2014

In an interview with Guidance 2222, Abraham and Ella both stated that Brian Gerrish came to visit them at Ella’s house in Hampstead “the day after the children had been kidnapped”. (By “kidnapped” they meant “taken into protective police custody”.)

Ella was not present, as she was in court attempting to have the children returned to her, but Abraham handed Gerrish a copy of the audio portion of the videos of the children which had been taken en route from Morocco to London.

Later, it became clear that the local authority (who were the legal guardians of the children at that time) had received copies of this audio material. In hindsight, Abraham and Ella came to believe that Gerrish had sent the LA a copy of the material they had given him.

Abraham leaves the UK

At around the time the children were taken into protective custody, some time between 12 and 17 September, Abraham left the UK, possibly fearing arrest. He would not return until February 2015.

17 September 2014

10:28 am
The police began the third and final set of ABE interviews.

The children, who had been away from Ella and Abraham for a week by now, had been eager to disclose something in the car on the way to the interview suite, but DC Martin had asked them to wait until their disclosures could be properly conducted and videotaped.

Once in the the interview suite, the little girl stated very clearly that everything she had told the police about the alleged cult had been a lie, and that she and her brother had been forced to lie by Abraham.

“Abraham’s the whole problem”, she stated, calling him “an idiot”.

The little boy seemed slightly more hesitant to go back on his earlier statements, but when told that he would not get into trouble for having previously lied, he agreed with his sister that they had been made to say things which were not true.

Both children described to police, and later to the psychiatrist Dr Claire Sturge and physician Dr Deborah Hodes the abuse they received from Abe during the time they were in Morocco.

In addition to waking them in the middle of the night to interrogate them about alleged sexual abuse, they said, Abraham had hit them with spoons.

It would emerge during Sabine McNeill’s 2018 trial that Abraham had heated the spoon on the stove before applying it to the little girl’s face.

The children told the doctor and psychiatrist that he also kicked them “as hard as he could” in the privates; pushed them into walls until they bled; threatened to bury the little girl alive in the desert; and hit them with a closed fist to the head. He hit the little boy so hard on the head that he ruptured his eardrum; both children reported impaired hearing during their medical exam. Abraham made them kneel in front of him in their underwear, while he poured water on them. The children referred to this as “water torture”.

15:29 pm
The children’s father was interviewed under caution +3. In the interview he stated that he had never abused the children in any way, that he was confused by the allegations against him, and that he believed Abraham Christie was a malignant influence on his children.

He expressed willingness to have the police examine his computer. They declined to seize his tech equipment, a decision which has been queried by armchair detectives. However, it’s important to be mindful that by the time the father’s police interview occurred, the children had already withdrawn their allegations.

18 September 2014

DC Martin received the email which had been sent by Abe and Ella to Gerrish, who had forwarded it to Maloney, who’d sent it to Wedger, who had sent it to his police contact.

The CRIS report states:

Thus it became clear to police that not only had Abraham and Ella abused the children whilst they were in Morocco, but that they had been sharing the details of what they had made the children say with at least one and possibly more known conspiracy pushers.

In other words, they were “marketing” the children’s allegations, having forced them to make them in the first place.

20 September 2014

The police formally closed the investigation into the case, classifying it as a non-crime incident. In addition to the children’s retractions of their original statements, various inconsistencies were cited, as well as complete lack of physical evidence in any of the locales named.

While it might have seemed reasonable for the police to have charged Abraham and Ella with child abuse on account of the mass of evidence pointing in that direction, at the time of the original investigation it seemed that all of the physical and emotional abuse had taken place in Morocco, where the Metropolitan police would have been unable to investigate it.

Abraham shares videos, plans publicity strategy

22 September 2014 

The following notation was made in the CRIS report:

From the information that we have, the children’s mother is living alone. Believe that Abraham has moved out of the house in order that she can regain custody of the children. There is no indication that the relationship is over. Abraham has circulated video interviews with the children taken while on holiday in Morocco where it is apparent that he has coached the children into disclosure….While in Morocco he has hit the children however the assaults do [not?] constitute an offence in this country suitable for prosecution. The children have indicated that they do not wish to return to the family home and are in fear of Abraham. Based on this I would be concerned for the welfare of the children if returned.

Abraham: It is believed that he is circulating videos of interviews of the children giving disclosure to people to raise awareness of the satanic cult. This may continue. …He has convictions for offences against his own children and I would suggest [this may cause] future safeguarding issues with these victims if they returned home.

Thus it is clear that prior to the videos going viral in February 2015 after they were shared online by Sabine McNeill, Abraham had been sharing copies as early as mid-September. However, they did not go far, and few people at this time were aware of the developing hoax.

September–October 2014 

In an audio conversation released in March 2019, Abraham and Ella discussed how they had planned to release the videos of the children in a controlled fashion. They express anger at Sabine for having released them prematurely, thus spoiling their plan.

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…

They mentioned having made plans with “a group”, and having had discussions to which Sabine had not been a party.

This original group had included Brian Gerrish and Araya Soma (aka Laurence Lavie), a Glastonbury-based would-be hippie and conspiracy theorist who claims to have been involved in the hoax six months before the videos “came into the media”:

Araya Soma claims she had trouble recruiting Maloney to “help”—i.e., to help circulate and popularise the videos of the children.

Similarly, she claims that Gerrish refused to help, though Gerrish himself would later claim that he was involved from the beginning. As noted above, he subjected the little boy to an extensive interview during the week following Abraham and Ella’s return to the UK from Morocco.

So why was he refusing to get involved now?

One possible explanation is Abraham and Ella’s well-documented insistence upon retaining control over the entire project. They would only give interviews, for example, when they had been assured that they would be able to review and edit the finished product before it was published online.

Brian Gerrish, who fancies himself a professional journalist, would have quickly rejected this sort of restriction, especially coming from a person like Abraham—uneducated, inexperienced, and yet very full of his own importance.

November 2014:
Ella meets Sabine McNeill

During her 2018 trial, Sabine McNeill testified that Ella phoned her in 2014, though she does not give the specific date for this first contact. By November 2014, however, Sabine said she had involved herself in Ella’s case. Ella was attempting to have the children returned from protective custody to her care. She was also attempting to convince the police to re-open the case, as she still wished to see the father jailed.

14 November 2014

Prior to her trial, Sabine identified this date as the day she was “(c)ontacted by Russian mother of two, then 8- and 9-year-old children, taken into care [custody] by Barnet Police on September 11, 2014 allowing contact with father whom they accused of being the leader of a ‘strange culture’ at a church and school in Hampstead, London”. (During her trial, she claimed she could not recall the date she first met Ella.)

On the same day, Sabine created a Dropbox file in which she posted an edited version of the “witness statement” which Ella had made, naming the children, parents, and teachers in Hampstead that Ella and Abe wished to target. While at first Sabine claimed not to recall the list, under cross-questioning she conceded that she had tidied it up before saving it, adding hyperlinks.

This list, which gives personal information about the parents and their children’s nannies, including telephone numbers, street addresses, places of work, and email addresses, was identified during Sabine’s trial as a direct copy of class lists, as it contained identical errors to the originals.

On 14 November, Sabine convened a meeting of people with whom she’d worked in the past, including Meirion Bowen, Yolande Lindridge, and Mary Rooney. They met at the London offices of solicitor Caroline Newman, and according to one person who attended, “[Sabine] excitedly broke the news that she had met up with Ella Draper and that she had taken on Ella’s case”. Also invited to that meeting were Belinda McKenzie and Ian Josephs, though it is not clear whether they attended.

Also on 14 November, a conspiracy blogger named Charlotte Ward published a pseudo-autobiographical e-book called Illuminati Party! under the pseudonym “Jacqui Farmer”. She also took down her relatively successful blog, Conspirituality, at around this time. Charlotte Ward had lived in Belinda McKenzie’s house in 2012–2013, and had supported Belinda during the Hollie Greig hoax and the Musa family trial.

Ward would later start a blog called Hampstead Research in which she and her partner Jacco de Boer published false allegations against people who were included in Ella’s “witness statement”.

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 and have the police case against the children’s father re-opened.

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)”.

The Hampstead hoax starts to go public

Now that Sabine had access to the videos and Ella’s “witness statement” as well as other material Ella’s sacked solicitors had given their ex-client, the hoax was ready to go online. While Abraham had made a rather weak attempt at putting the videos online in September, Sabine would make use of her many blogs and contacts, online petition sites, and other social media to spread the word.

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 printed leaflets regarding returning the children to their “Russian Mother” outside Southwark Crown Court. Ella’s care proceedings were still before the courts at the time, and no decision had been made regarding the children. Thus the leaflets were in contempt of court.

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 in her Google Drive as the “most convincing evidence” that they should hand the children back to their mother.

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 Anna 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.

In the body of the email, Sabine included 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)”.

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 Henry Curteis’ Tap Blog, titled “Children describe Satanic murders they were forced to take part in”, which contained an email to then-Home Secretary Theresa May, along with a list of, and links to, the original videos of P and Q. As Sabine had predicted in her email to Curteis, the videos quickly went viral, with more than 4 million people having viewed them by 10 March 2015.

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.

This email reveals two crucial things:

3 February 2015

A conversation thread called “Child Abuse victims interview” begins on the David Icke Forum. This thread, which begins with a post from a blog called Aangirfan, will eventually surpass 1,000 pages of debate. Although the thread takes place on the Icke Forum, Icke himself has never backed the Hampstead hoax.

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.

8 February 2015

By this time, a full-blown power struggle was taking place, with Abraham, Ella, and Araya in opposition to Sabine, Belinda McKenzie, Charlotte Ward, Butlincat, and their group of seasoned conspiracy promoters.

Gerrish and Maloney, who had worked with Belinda McKenzie to publicise the Hollie Greig hoax only a year or two earlier, were far more comfortable working with McKenzie and McNeill than they had been with Abraham and Ella. They would have viewed Abraham and Ella not just as unpleasant people, difficult to render saleable to their audiences, but worse, as loose cannons and control freaks.

However, Abraham and Ella were not about to give up so easily.

On 8 February, Ella Draper sent the following email to Sabine McNeill:

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

Sabine’s reaction to this was to state that now she was “nicely miffed”. In an email to her group, she said,

Victims are their own worst enemy, after all. If Abraham wants to run the show, let him. Our ‘group’ does not include him.

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 court order specified that both she and Sabine were to remove from the internet all material related to the proceedings which were 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. In a recording of this event, Ella and Abraham can both be heard inside the house, as can her parents who were visiting from Russia, and her solicitor, who attempted to negotiate through the letter slot with police.

Wishing to avoid arrest, Ella and Abraham evaded police and Ella 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 an update to her Change.org petition 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, claiming that his hemp smoothies cure “state-sponsored trauma-based mind control”. Or something.

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. She reiterated this the next day, in response to a comment on one of her many blogs:

Shortly afterward, the videos went online, and like the first set of interview videos, rapidly went 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).

This was the first known Hampstead involvement by Charlotte Ward. Within weeks she would set up the blog Hampstead Research, from which she would engineer a campaign of brutal harassment against those accused of  belonging to the alleged cult.

Sabine urged readers to “share, share, share”, and said about the Hampstead case, “Once this is over, I can go back to my flat and continue publishing”.

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. The videos would continue to proliferate across the internet, with no thought given to the impact they could ultimately have on the children, those they named, or their families.

2 May 2015

Scarlet Scoop started this blog, and began posting material debunking and critiquing material put online by Sabine, Charlotte/Jacqui, and others. In August 2015, after having written more than 1,000 posts, Scarlet would hand over the writing to El Coyote.

The blog is justifiably hated and feared by those who promote the Hampstead SRA hoax, who would prefer that their machinations not be subjected to the cold glare of reality.

May 2017

A reader on Hoaxtead Research raised the question of the alleged tattoos which Abe and Ella insisted the children had witnessed on those who had allegedly abused them.

Ella originally claimed that both her ex-husband and the father of her two youngest children were “in the cult”, which she described as a life-long, multi-generational organisation. If her story were consistent, as life-long cult members, both men would have received “devil or monster” genital tattoos at a young age. However, Ella, who had had children with both men, either noticed absolutely nothing unusual about them.

When asked about this, Abe evaded the question for several weeks, but eventually came back with the following explanation: This makes no sense, as according to the original story, all cult members received their tattoos at a young age. In addition, it says nothing about Ella’s first husband, who she accused of being the “financier” of the cult.

Abe and Ella’s inability to answer this question created a large rift in their dwindling community of supporters.

June 2017

Shortly after the tattoo question, Ella disclosed to one of her interviewers, Nathan Stolpman of Lift the Veil, that in fact she had “been mistaken” in including her ex-husband, his current wife, and Ella and Mr Draper’s son in the list of cult members. According to Mr Stolpman,

“I saw in her original, er, charges or document that she drew up with, er, something called McKenzie Friends – and I’ll talk to you about that – erm, that’s a little bit of a psy op too – and, er, she mentioned that Mr. Draper, her ex-husband, was also involved with the cult, the Satanic cult. I’ve spoken with her now since and asked her about it and she says now she doesn’t believe that was the case and that was maybe something she was prompted into coming up with at the time when she was under duress.”

This admission called into question the videos of the two children, in which they stated that their older brother had been a “cult” member, and that he had participated in sexually abusing them.

It is possible, though not certain, that Ella made this statement in an attempt to placate her ex-husband, who had previously been her only source of income, until the 18th birthday of their son. Ella may have removed her son, his father, and his new wife from the hoax narrative in hopes that she might be able to beg for some money, as she and Abraham were currently without an income.

Updated: 29 March 2021

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