Hoaxed: a podcast investigation of Hampstead’s satanic paedophile ring – which doesn’t exist

In the summer of 2014, two children accused their father of running a Satan-worshipping paedophile ring. According to them, Ricky Dearman led a group of roughly 175 parents, teachers and religious leaders, whose demonic abuse was centred on their school and adjoining church in the affluent north London neighbourhood of Hampstead. They claimed that when police visited those locations, they would find “dead babies”.

Scotland Yard became involved, after videos of the children’s testimony were sent to them. But when the police found no evidence, the children recanted, revealing the eerie truth to investigators: they had been forced into making the false allegations by their mother, Ella Draper, and her partner, Abraham Christie – in a process a judge would later refer to as “torture”. However, because the abuse had happened off UK soil – on holiday in Morocco –