DURING the day, they were an ordinary group of mums, juggling the demands of work and caring for their children – but by night, they were a secret crack team of detectives.
The four women – whose children all went to the same school in Hampstead, North London – had inexplicably found themselves accused of being part of a Satan-worshipping paedophile ring.
Their names and contact details – and that of their children’s – were posted online as part of a list of 175 alleged cult members in 2015.
The outrageous allegations, found to be baseless, were shared millions of times on the internet, giving rise to a widely shared conspiracy theory.
The four mums – who cannot be named for legal reasons and are played by actresses in the show – and other innocent families were subject to a campaign of abuse, with people threatening to kill them, set fire to their homes and even kidnap their own children.
Now, speaking publicly for the first time, ahead of a new Channel 4 documentary, Accused: The Hampstead Paedophile Hoax, some reveal how in the darkest of twists, they were even contacted by paedophiles asking to meet up with their kids.
With the authorities unable to help, the quartet banded together – with one of them even going undercover and infiltrating the vile online trolls – to build a legal case against their harassers.
And after four years of fighting, they took on their abusers and got justice.
Speaking to The Sun, one mum, known as Anna, 56, says: “We all felt this strong sense of injustice. This was totally wrong.
“It was the anger for our children.”
Another, known as Jenny, 60, says: “It just never seemed like an option to give up.”
The nightmare began in July 2014 after a series of false allegations made by two pupils at the school.
Their mum, Ella Draper, and her new boyfriend Abraham Christie claimed that her children had accused their father of running a Satan-worshipping paedophile ring, which also included other parents and teachers from their school.
During police interviews, they said cult members had slit babies’ throats, cooked their bodies and drank their blood.
The kids were interviewed by police and alleged other children were sexually abused and babies murdered, with cult members drinking their blood.
Police investigated but could find no evidence. Then, in September, the children – aged eight and nine – were re-interviewed and changed their story.
Horrifying abuse at home
This time, they claimed that Ella and Abraham had made them lie, and told how their mum’s boyfriend had been physically abusive to them.
The police investigation was closed and the children were taken into care.
The four mums were first made aware of the situation in February 2015, shortly after the police interview videos of the two young children were published online.
One of them, known as Anna, says: “It was about 4pm and I was at work. I got an email from the school saying there had been some allegations, police had investigated and found nothing. But it didn’t say what the allegations were so the first thing I did was Google it.”
She was horrified by what she saw.
Anna recalls: “Ella’s daughter had named my daughter in full as being one of the children abused.
“It was a heart-stopping moment.”
Not only that, an 11-page document detailing the allegations against the 175 people, alongside their personal details, was made public.
The four women’s youngsters – all aged nine at the time – were among 20 kids alleged to have participated in sexual satanic rituals alongside their name, address and telephone number, and in some cases pictures.
To protect identities, actors are lip syncing their parents’ words in the one-off film, which airs on Monday.
“Abraham had been a really malevolent figure in the playground
Anna
Speaking in the documentary, one of the women, known as Alice recalls: “Someone had taken the time to highlight my daughter in red which was quite concerning.”
Anna immediately contacted the police, while some of the mums confronted Ella, who bizarrely claimed the police were behind the leak before admitting a woman called Sabine McNeill had done it.
The activist and untrained legal advisor had been supporting Russian-born Ella while she was locked in an ugly custody battle with her second husband.
As she had chosen to represent herself in the family court, she had access to all the evidence, including videos of the police interviews.
Fearing Ella’s children would be taken away, Sabine posted everything online, with the mum’s consent.
Contacted by real-life paedophiles
The couple had already drawn attention to themselves before all this. Anna, whose daughter was friends with Ella’s daughter and had been to their house for a birthday party, thought she was “odd”.
The Russian-born raw food vegan, who adopted an alternative lifestyle, had raised concerns about her parenting.
Anna recalls: “She told some parents at the school gates that when her children were sick, she gave them an enema and they should too.”
And she says: “Abraham had been a really malevolent figure in the playground. When it was children’s birthdays, parents would often take in sweets as a treat. One day he was ranting at a teacher, ‘what are you doing killing these children? Sugar is a killer.’”
Both Jenny and Alice say they were contacted by paedophiles.
Alice says in the film: “I got an email from someone that said they liked my daughter’s profile on the website where she’s highlighted in red and that they would like me to bring my daughter and meet up with them.
“So I was getting emails from paedophiles believing what they’d heard about my daughter.
“I literally ran to the bathroom and threw up everywhere.”
Her daughter’s photo was then taken from an old Google email account. Alice says: “I blame myself so much because I totally forgot that account even existed, and the realisation that they know what she looks like and my world came crashing down because we had nothing left to cling onto at that point.”
She breaks down as she adds: “Because I felt all my tools had been removed from me now…”
Relentless threats
The abuse the mums received was relentless. Jenny says: ”We had death threats, by phone, email, even a drone over the school.
“People were threatening to burn down our houses. When they started talking about kidnapping or ‘rescuing’ the 20 specific children – that became alarming.”
One of the mums, known as Sarah, describes in the film how she slept next to her daughter’s bed and carried dumbbells in her bag as protection.
In April 2015, a High Court judge ruled that the accusations were “entirely baseless” and added: “Those who have sought to perpetuate them are evil and, or foolish.”
But after the judgement, people started arriving in Hampstead.
Jenny says: “It just fanned the flames.”
She adds: “We had vigilantes and lynch mobs threatening to come to town. Apparently, they were going to investigate us, check our privates to see if we had devil tattoos, kill us, set fire to our homes or rescue our children.”
Jenny says the police told them not to meet up or look at the online content and it would blow over, but she knew they were wrong.
She says: “I could immediately see it was an organised campaign, and people had specific jobs within it, whether they were paid or not I don’t know.”
At first, there was a larger group of concerned parents, particularly those whose children had been named.
Jenny says: “There was a lot of hysteria and disbelief, everyone just trying to understand what was going on. There were discussions as to what we might do.”
He was raising money to get here, to kick our doors down and take our kids blood, to see if we were drugging our children
Alice
But the numbers of concerned parents getting involved began to dwindle due to the inability of law enforcement to properly prosecute the online perpetrators.
Jenny says: “After the first case fell apart in July 2016, lots of people fell away. But the harassment continued.
“After meeting Anna at a cross country event, I discovered that she felt as strongly about this – so our smaller group emerged, and we’ve been on this journey for justice ever since.”
The police struggled to find a charge they could use against their harassers and the law didn’t really exist to keep up with internet crimes of such nature.
Undeterred, the four women sought advice from experts on taking down internet material.
Anna says: “They told me one of the best ways is to get amongst them and embed yourself with them.
“It’s not as crazy as it sounds. There’s that old adage, keep friends close and your enemies closer.”
Alice decided to go undercover online, creating alter egos to infiltrate the online conspiracy groups.
She says in the film: “You need to start learning to think how they think. I set up accounts to watch them, and have accounts where they’re my friends.”
Anna says of Alice’s efforts: “I admire her guts. It’s ballsy.
“It was another tool in being to play them at their own game.”
Detective work
One of those making threats was American blogger Rupert Wilson Quaintance.
Alice says in the documentary: “He was raising money to get here, to kick our doors down and take our kids blood, to see if we were drugging our children.
“He became quickly a threat, so he quickly became a friend.”
In September 2016, he boarded a plane to London and went to the school, claiming he was armed with a knife.
Alice says: “As he became my friend on social media I was able to watch every single thing he did.”
She tracked him down to an address in South London before calling police and he was arrested.
It was essentially the last day of normal life for me and my family
Jenny
He was charged with five counts of harassment and found guilty of two. He was sentenced nine months on each charge to be served concurrently and was also banned from posting anything about the false allegations online.
The four women compiled a dossier of evidence, communicating on a WhatsApp group, while also trying to get vile posts taken down.
Anna recalls: “We all had busy working days and young families to take care of during the course of the evening but that quiet time from about 9pm would be the time we would look at what had happened that day.
“There was a conversation thread on a David Icke forum and that ended up having 10,000 posts of people surmising and trying to investigate.
“We were screenshotting everything. We’d often be up until the early hours, getting just a few hours sleep.
“There were probably 12,000 screenshots on my camera roll across those five years.”
Anna adds: “I work in project management and I’m a former librarian so I have experience in collating and filing information.
“Sarah had a legal background. We all brought different skills.”
‘UK’s worst troll’
In a landmark case for the four women, ringleader Sabine, who repeatedly encouraged her followers to descend on Hampstead and confront the alleged Satanists, was finally jailed for nine years in 2019, after being convicted of four counts of harassment and six counts of breaching a restraining order. Sabine, now 80, was branded Britain’s worst troll.
Anna says: “We went from no case to answer to the longest sentence handed down in UK courts for harassment and stalking.”
She says of the victory, “I think we went for a glass of wine.”
Surprisingly, Abraham was never questioned by police over the alleged child abuse. Ella, now 50, and Abraham, now 67, have been in exile since fleeing to Spain in 2015.
They have continued to push the hoax.
Final reprieve
Anna says: “It might have been a different story if he’d been arrested in the first few weeks. All this might not have happened.”
She adds: “We kept a dignified silence because we didn’t want to jeopardise the legal process and we had also seen what happened when people put their head above the parapet.”
But the four decided to speak out in a bid to stop it happening to others.
Their children are now 18 but the women remain close, and always meet up every year on February 5, the day their lives changed forever.
Jenny says: “It was essentially the last day of normal life for me and my family.”
Anna says: “I think there will forever be a bond. You can’t go through everything we have gone through and not keep in contact.
“The WhatsApp group is still there. It fires occasionally.”
For some, it may never be over. To this day, Alice is still in various conspiracy groups under her assumed identity, saying it would be “stupid” to leave.
Explaining her reasons, she says in the film: “When you’ve watched them for five years and seen how f***ing persistent these people are, how they’re not going away, how they’re mentally unhinged and how they’re obsessed with this story and are obsessed with protecting your child and saving your child…no, there’s no shutting a book on this story.”
Alice adds: “So me shutting those accounts would be stupid because you’re dealing with people that won’t let it go.”
Accused: The Hampstead Paedophile Hoax is on Channel 4 at 9pm on March 11