Parents and teachers from a fancy primary school in Hampstead, London were accused of running a Satanist cult, sexually abusing and killing children before drinking their blood.
Their names, numbers and addresses were published online alongside the vile accusations for all to see, and it didn't take long for those accusations to attract attention from online conspiracy theorists.
Speaking to Alexi Mostrous for Hoaxed, a six-part podcast series about what happened, one parent described receiving phone calls at all hours.
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"They’d say, 'You are an abuser. You are raping children. You are killing them'. It was incredibly distressing."
The accusations even saw dozens of angry protestors travel to the primary school, shouting "paedophile" and "murderers" at teachers and parents.
The conspiracy theory wasn't conjured up on some dark corner of the internet, but rather by a middle-class mother whose children attended the school.
In 2014 Ella Draper, now 49, was embroiled in an ugly custody battle with her second husband.
In July that year, Ella and new man Abraham Christie claimed the children had made a series of horrifying allegations regarding their father, other parents and teachers from the school.
In interviews to the police, the children detailed a Satanic paedophile ring, tales of murdered babies and dark sacrifices.
However, there was no evidence of the cult and in September 2014 the children told police they'd been pressured by Ella and Abraham to make the allegations. The investigation was closed.
Then, Ella chose to represent herself in the family courts for the custody case, meaning she got access to evidence including videos of the children's police interviews.
She handed the evidence to Sabine McNeill, now 77, an informal legal advisor who had previously accused family courts of stealing hundreds of children away from their families.
In January 2015, Sabine uploaded Ella's confidential material - including the interviews and home videos of the children alleging satanic abuse - to the internet, with the mother's blessing.
She also published an 11-page document titled Mass Child Sex Abuse In Satanic Ritual Abuse And Sacrifice Cult, outlining allegations against 175 people alongside their personal details.
Given that this happened during the ongoing custody case, police were sent to Ella's house to get an explanation.
Writing in the Daily Mail, podcast host Alexi explained: "After stalling, Ella ran into her back garden, climbed over the fence into the neighbouring property — and then over three more fences — to the street.
"The next day she fled to Spain, with Abraham following a day later. She hasn’t been back to the UK since."
In August 2015, Ella was absent from a hearing in which her lawyer failed to get a High Court judgement overturned. That judgement ruled that Ella and Abraham subjected her two kids to “relentless emotional and psychological pressure as well as significant physical abuse” in order to get them to lie.
Ella's lawyer claimed she fled the country because “she panicked” and was “terrified of the stories she had heard from her children”. The appeal was not granted.
It was after she fled that the harassment of those accused began, with families moving houses and parents sleeping on children's bedroom floors to make sure they're safe.
Luckily, Karen Irving, 64 and from Ottawa, Canada, set up the Hoaxtead blog in May 2015. Karen's internet warriors gathered evidence against the hoaxers.
Thanks to their efforts, Sabine was put on trial in November 2018 for stalking, harassment and breaching a restraining order. She was sentenced to nine years imprisonment.
At her trial, one mother said she didn't sleep for nearly four years as there were "lots of suggestions online" that people may abduct her son.
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The court also heard that Sabine put an image of one girl, nine, online and described her as the "star of a sex show".
The mother described feeling physically when paedophiles contacted her asking if her daughter was available for sex.
Alexi still has two more podcasts to make in the series. He writes: "With luck, as a result of our evidence, the police might finally take an interest in Abraham and Ella, the original hoaxers."
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