The woman to the left is Ella Draper. If you keep up with online conspiracy theories, you may well be familiar with her. If not, here’s a short introduction (I encourage you to read this judicial document for more).
Ella Draper is a UK citizen who, alongside her boyfriend Abraham Christie, abused the two children she had with a previous partner. The judge presiding over the case stated that “torture is a strong word but it is the most accurate way to describe what was done to the children by Mr Christie in collaboration with Ms Draper.”
And yet, despite this sordid affair, Ella Draper maintains a support base. Why? Simple: she and her immediate circle managed to con a particularly gullible segment of the conspiracy theorist community into believing that Christie and herself were framed, and that her children were actually abused by a cult of Satanists with connections to the local authorities of Hampstead.
Here’s how the judicial document (which refers to the children as P and Q to protect their identities) summarises the claims:
In a variety of ways, it was suggested that P and Q were part of a large group of children from north London who had been sexually abused, made to abuse one another and that they had belonged to a satanic cult in which there was significant paedophile activity.
Specifically, it was said that babies were supplied from all over the world. They were bought, injected with drugs and then sent by TNT or DHL to London. The assertions were that babies had been abused, tortured and then sacrificed. Their throats were slit, blood was drunk and cult members would then dance wearing babies’ skulls (sometimes with blood and hair still attached) on their bodies. All the cult members wore shoes made of baby skin produced by the owner of a specified shoe repair shop. Children, it was alleged, would be anally abused by adult members of the cult using plastic penises or “willies.”
Christchurch Primary School in Hampstead was said to be where the “main action” occurred but at least seven other local schools were named. East Finchley swimming pool was identified as one of the other meeting venues for the paedophile ring. Rituals were performed, so it was claimed, in an upstairs room at the McDonald’s restaurant where the “boss” allowed child sacrifice because he was a member of the cult. Human babies were prepared, cooked in the ovens within a secret kitchen and then eaten by cult members.
Satanists eating infants in McDonalds and making baby-skinned footwear at a shoe repair shop? Anyone with a grain of common sense should find these claims extremely dubious. And sceptics were vindicated when the children revealed to police that they had been forced by Draper and Christie into repeating a false narrative, with Christie physically abusing them as part of the coercion:
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 authorities found physical scars from the abuse carried out by Christie:
Arising out of the first examination, it was reported that P and Q had a number of scars and abrasions consistent with their assertions of having been physically abused by Mr Christie.
Here is the judge’s conclusion:
All the indications are that over a period of some weeks last summer, P and Q were forced by Mr Christie and Ms Draper, working in partnership, to provide accounts of horrific events. The stories came about as the result of relentless emotional and psychological pressure as well as significant physical abuse. Torture is a strong word but it is the most accurate way to describe what was done to the children by Mr Christie in collaboration with Ms Draper.
Small wonder, then, that Ella Draper went on the run:
On 12 February, police officers attended at Ms Draper’s address. Her car was on the driveway […] 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. The mother has not been seen by anyone in authority since 12 February. There are rumours that she has fled abroad.
In their false testimony, Draper and company named a number of innocent Hampstead residents as baby-eating Satanists, causing these people to be subsequently hounded by online mobs:
[T]he claims made against the father, the children’s former head teacher, other teachers, professionals and a very large number of parents at the children’s former school have proliferated. Many of those individuals are now living in fear because they have been identified on the internet as abusers of children and their contact details including telephone numbers, home and email addresses have been published. Lives have been disrupted. Several of those implicated have received malicious, intimidating ‘phone calls and emails at all hours of the day and night from all over the world. For example, “Hey cock. We’re coming for you. You scum paedo.”
Once Pizzagate broke out, the Hampstead hoax was folded into the wider narrative, with Pizzagaters eagerly following Draper’s videos as she added more and more ludicrous twists to her tale (such as her claim that the Satanists forced her children to appear in a Super Bowl advert). Pizzagaters are known for smearing innocent people as child molesters based on utterly nonsensical evidence, but by embracing Ella Draper, they went further: Draper’s supporters are not only smearing innocent people, they are defending actual child abusers.
Because that’s exactly what Ella Draper and Abraham Christie are: child abusers. Anybody who tries to portray them as innocent parties is – knowingly or not – taking part in a child abuse cover-up.
Now, you may be wondering why I’m writing about this, given that I usually blog about the fantasy and science fiction scene. Well, one of the sites hosting content that whitewashes Draper is the Infogalactic wiki, founded by alt-right fantasy maestro Vox Day.
The relevant article is entitled “List of alleged pedophilia elites”. I can’t legally link to it, as it identifies Draper’s two children by name, but here is the passage discussing the subject:
The above text was added on 9 June 2017. It has now been part of the site for more than a year.
Let’s deconstruct its summary of the matter. Nowhere does the article mention the wildly implausible aspects of Draper’s claims, such as baby-skin shoes, human sacrifice in McDonalds or Satanic captives getting cameos in Super Bowl ads. The article says that Ella Draper “was never accused” even though her children testified to the police that Draper allowed Christie to abuse them (“I feel angry with her, letting Abraham do all that stuff to us” said the daughter).
The article does link to a blog dedicated to debunking the hoax… but describes its content in sinister terms as “views that support the state” and implies that the contributors are sock-puppets operated by the father of the two children (whose name I’ve removed for reasons of privacy). It states that the father “was accused of participating” but doesn’t mention that he was cleared in court. In short, the Infogalactic article is making a complete hash of the facts in order to protect child-abuser Ella Draper.
Now, I don’t know what Vox Day himself makes of the Draper affair, or whether he is even aware of it. He hasn’t personally contributed to Infogalactic’s pro-Draper article, and while an avid supporter of Pizzagate, he doesn’t appear to have discussed Draper or Christie on his blog. It’s quite possible that he is unaware of how his site has been used to whitewash child abuse.
But let’s put this in perspective. Infogalactic currently has only a few dozen original articles (as opposed to articles copied from Wikipedia) so even a modestly-sized team should have no trouble curating its content. Furthermore, the very title of the article in question – “List of alleged pedophilia elites” – should make it clear that rigorous fact-checking is necessary. Yet nobody involved with running the site has taken the time to examine the article’s claims; instead, they have allowed Infogalactic to be used as part of an attempted child abuse cover-up for more than a year. This is, at best, an appalling failure of duty.
Infogalactic is widely seen as something of a joke amongst people familiar with it. Almost all of its content was copied from Wikipedia during 2016 and never updated, leading to such gaffes as Disney’s Moana being identified as an “upcoming 2016 film” years after its release. However, as its coverage of Ella Draper demonstrates, the site is more than a joke: it has a seriously dark side.
Doris V. Sutherland 