Father cleared of running devil cult gets death threats
THE father of t wo young children tortured into claiming he was the leader of a satanic cult says he still gets death threats despite a judge dismissing the allegations as “baseless”.
Mrs Justice Pauffley said at a public hearing last month that the children, aged eight and nine, had suffered “incalculable” harm after their mother and her new partner forced them to “provide concocted accounts of horrific events”.
Their father Ricky, who said he is not giving his full name to protect his children’s identities, told the BBC that their minds had been “mixed up, messed up”. He added: “My two children, eight and nine, they ’d said I ’d sexually abused them and I was selling them to people in this satanic cult thing. They named 60, 70, 80 people. Having to go and watch videos when your own chil- dren say these things about you, imagine what the children must have had to do in their own psyche, their own minds, to eventually give up to beatings and stuff to say this.”
It was claimed that their father, who had separated from their mother, was the head of a cult which abused and sacrificed babies, slitting their throats and drinking their blood.
More than 100 people, including a school head, a teacher, a priest, social workers and police, were said to have been part of the cult which had been “doing sex” to children. Rumours of the group, allegedly operating in Hampstead, were posted online as part of an internet campaign which the judge said was likely to have “devastating consequences” for the children.
The father’s two children were said to have been punched, pinched and kicked in order to get them to tell the made-up stories about him.
In her ruling, Mrs Justice Pauffley named the children’s mother as Ella Draper and her partner as Abraham Christie. She said she was “able to state with complete conviction that none of the allegations are true.”
She added that Ms Draper had vanished, amid “rumours she had fled abroad”, and Barnet social services had begun proceedings to take the children, who cannot be named, into care.