Children forced to say father was leader of satanic cult

The father of two young children tortured into claiming he was the leader of a satanic cult has said he still gets death threats despite a judge dismissing the allegations as “baseless”.

Mrs Justice Pauffley said at a public hearing in London last month that the children, aged eight and nine, had suffered “incalculable” harm after their mother and her partner forced them to “provide concocted accounts of horrific events”.

Their father, speaking to the BBC, said his children’s minds had been “mixed up, messed up” by the traumatic events.

“My children, my two children, eight and nine, they’d said that I’d sexually abused them and I was selling them to people in this satanic cult thing. They named 60, 70, 80 people,” he said.

“Having to go and watch these videos when your own children 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 stuff.”

It had been 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 the children.

Rumours of the cult, said to be operating in north London, were posted online as part of an internet campaign which the judge said was likely to have “devastating consequences”.

The children, who cannot be named, were subjected to various forms of assault to get them to tell the made-up stories.

In her ruling, Mrs Justice Pauffley named the children’s mother as Ella Draper and her partner as Abraham Christie.