If anyone has read this blog for any length of time then you will know that I have little time for and an absolute disgust for what I call the ‘Satan sniffers’, those individuals, often from fringe Christian groups, who continue to push the completely nonsensical idea that Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) is really happening. They are about as connected to the idea of truth as are the Flat Earthers connected to the world of planetary physics. In multiple locations and in multiple jurisdictions there have been enquiries into alleged Satanic Ritual Abuse and every one of them has shown that it really does not exist. Yes of course some abusers will use ritualistic elements to frighten people into complying with abuse but the idea that there are organised gangs of Satan worshippers breeding or trading in children is absolute bollocks.
As I’ve said before I had the absolute privilege of hearing live, back in the late 90’s at a meeting in London, Professor Jean De La Fontaine who carried out a study of SRA allegations for the UK Government. She found that all the claims of SRA were groundless and that there was no basis in truth for SRA claims. Other studies carried out in the USA based on other cases of SRA claims have also ended up uncovering absolutely nothing.
SRA claims should have been the bullshit creature that died decades ago, but sadly it has not. This zombie conspiracy theory seems to resurrect itself every few years and every time the claims turn out to be false. The trouble is that these false claims don’t stay in the forums or the heads of the deluded Satan Sniffers, they can sometimes spill out and cause real world trouble.
At the very least the fake tales put about by the Satan Sniffers can result in innocent people being harassed and having to move home to get away from the Satan sniffing nutcases. At its worst the delusion that there are thousands of Satanic abusers targeting children ends up in serious crimes being committed.
An appalling example of the latter has recently come out of Wales and shows how a deluded and violent Satan sniffer and their pals put their delusions into action and kidnapped a child from their foster parent. The Satan Sniffers, three of them, in this case have been gaoled for significantly lengthy terms and quite frankly I have no qualms with supporting these sentences. The Satan Sniffers were gaoled for 22 years, 19 years and 15 years respectively. The Satan Sniffers kidnapped the child at knifepoint in broad daylight but were thankfully intercepted by armed police four and a half hours later.
The Times said:
It must have been the most bizarre trial Judge Nicola Jones has ever presided over. Last Thursday, at Caernarfon crown court in north Wales, she jailed six people for a conspiracy to kidnap a child, at knifepoint, in broad daylight, who apparently believed they were “rescuing” the boy from a satanic cult on the Isle of Anglesey. One of the kidnappers was a north London lawyer, another was a Christian charity counsellor.
The kidnappers were arrested last November after they abducted an eight-year-old boy from the care of his foster mother, who had just collected him after school. The court heard that Anke Hill, 51, grabbed the child, while Wilfred Wong, 56, a “non-practising” barrister, held a knife to the face of the foster mother until, “screaming and hysterical”, she let the boy go. The kidnappers drove off with the terrified youngster as two other women acted as lookouts on the two bridges from Anglesey to the mainland.
The kidnappers were intercepted 4½ hours later by police in armed response units on the M1 in Northamptonshire, more than 150 miles away, after the distraught foster mother called 999.
The court heard that the gang plotted to snatch the boy because they believed he was being subjected to so-called satanic ritual abuse by a cult that supposedly included the child’s father. Police have established that no such cult exists.
The trial was held in secrecy and details are protected, because of court orders. But what we do know is that at some point in late 2019, Wong was contacted by Hill. She lived on Anglesey and had claimed that the child was the victim of satanic abuse. Police investigations found no evidence of this. The child was in foster care but Hill continued to pursue the satanic allegations: she and Wong spent hours on the phone to each other, billing records showed. Wong put her in touch with Janet Stevenson, 67, a counsellor who specialises in working with victims of “satanic abuse”.
The three of them organised an elaborate plan with five other suspects (one was found not guilty; another, Robert Frith, 65, was found dead in his prison cell not long after his arrest). It involved codenames and a clandestine rendezvous at Bangor railway station. They decided to kidnap the boy on his way home from school. He was wrestled from his car seat as Wong held a knife to the foster carer’s face, before slashing one of the car’s tyres to stop her following them.
This is a truly horrific case and I commend the police in bringing this crime to an end so swiftly. However it’s a case that shows that the SRA loonies have not only not gone away or recovered some common sense, but that they are increasingly willing to use violence to ‘rescue’ children they mistakenly believe are the victims of SRA. This case also shows that fringe Christian groups are still involved in pushing the lie that SRA is a real thing. Because of the involvement of these Christian groups it is about time that the Established Church, the Catholic Church and those in the non-comformist Christian movements did a bit more to counter the activities of these fringe Satan obsessed nutjobs. Personally I’d like to see more senior clerics from these churches standing up to these Satan sniffers and doing their bit to not let them infiltrate and influence their congregations. I can’t recall the last time that the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of Westminster or the Elders of the non-conformist churches spoke out against these Satan obsessed nutters. Maybe it’s time for these organisations to stand up and denounce these fringe groups as it’s obvious that they have not gone away. There needs to be some significantly effective internal messaging both within churches and in the churches social media presence to stop Christians being ensnared by SRA obsessives.
This Anglesey case has ended up with some significantly long gaol sentences for the nutcases involved in this kidnapping and rightly so. The Times reported the sentences as follows:
The commitment of this gang to the belief in the idea of satanic abuse is so strong that the judge was forced to consider it in her sentencing. She concluded that Hill and Wong were the ringleaders. Hill was sentenced to an extended sentence of 19 years and five months, comprising a custodial term of 14 years and five months and extended period on licence of five years. Wong was sentenced to a total of 22 years, comprising a custodial term of 17 years and an extended licence period of five years.
Stevenson, the counsellor, was jailed for 15 years. The judge told her that she still had “entrenched views on the victims of satanic ritual abuse” and, like Hill and Wong, there was a danger she would reoffend because of this belief. Their belief in a conspiratorial world of satanic abuse appears to be more widely held than anyone would care to imagine.
Indeed many people who were shocked by the initial revelations of fake SRA claims thirty or forty years ago may have been under the impression that the problem had been solved and that no more would we see Satan obsessed nutjobs roaming the streets and putting innocent people through hell. Sadly that has not been the case. I’ve observed with growing disgust over the last five years or so how SRA obsessed individuals along with the likes of the followers of Brian Gerrish, Britain’s pound shop Alex Jones, have managed to infiltrate and influence once relatively respectable civic nationalist groups and it turns my stomach it really does. I’m also unsurprised to see, in the context of the Anglesey case report by the Times, mention of Jon Wedger as a source of SRA bunkum.
I’ve seen groups like the Democratic Football Lads Alliance and the remnants of the EDL, people who once spoke out passionately about the very real problems that working class Britons face, such as Islamic Rape Gangs, become infiltrated by the followers of SRA and CSE grifters like ex police officer Jon Wedger and have members of these groups make claims that have no basis in reality such as that the late Edward Heath, the former Tory Prime Minister, was a ‘Satanic paedophile’ despite such claims having no basis in reality as far as I can ascertain.
For me the point when I realised that something was wrong and that there were still people who believed the thoroughly disproven guff about SRA and that it was still circulating and still causing problems was at a Tommy Robinson demo in Whitehall in London a few years back. There was a small knot of individuals gathered near the statue of Field Marshall Montgomery, who were discussing some of the allegations of CSA and elite and Satanic paedophile rings made by Jon Wedger but who faced no challenge from those around them. This group’s main concern was not whether or not Wedger was telling the truth or exploiting the subject of CSA for his own ends, but Wedger’s ‘cowardice’ in not naming names. I knew enough about Wedger at that point to know that the here is a man whose claims really should be taken with not so much a pinch of salt but a whole bucket load and I was shocked to find out that Wedgers bollocks claims were being taken seriously by those who were attending a demonstration that was ostensibly about the shocking problem of Islamic Rape Gangs.
I felt additional concern when at another TR demo in the same place, Mr Robinson and his followers allowed a nutter to come to the stage to give a speech but he started out his speech by shouting out ‘Britain is being run by Satanic paedophiles’. This struck me as a bit ‘off’ and someone like this should not have been allowed by the organisers to speak at a demo about Islamic Rape Gangs as associating the very real problem of Islamic Rape Gangs with the utterly and completely disproven guff about ‘Satanic paedophiles’ diminished the core cause and gave weapons to those who wish to say that the problem of Islamic Rape Gangs does not exist. I got the same sense of shock and disgust at seeing completely discredited SRA guff being promoted at Tommy Robinson demos as I did when I saw the Stalin Society turn up at moderate Leftist demos back when I was a Leftist. However the main difference for me was that the Stalin Society would turn up uninvited, the nutter who shouted out about ‘Satanic paedophiles’ was unfortunately invited by either Mr Robinson or those around him. To have a few extreme or lunatic nutters taking part in a demo without the knowledge of the organisers is to a large extent forgivable, but to invite such people onto the stage is questionable to say the least.
I’m disgusted to see that the ‘Satan sniffers’ are back in action. I thought that the gaoling of Sabine McNeil for harassing and stalking people over false claims about SRA a few years back and the exposure of the Hollie Grieg hoax might have gone a long way to finally killing off the false claims of SRA. Sadly it has not done so. SRA is the myth that will not die and is also the myth that hollows out otherwise solid citizens groups and in some cases leads individuals to commit the sort of awful and unforgivable offences such as we’ve seen in the Anglesey case. No matter who we are, no matter whether our politics is of the Left or the Right and no matter how experienced we are or not in the political world, we need to exclude these SRA nutters from our midst and treat them with the contempt they deserve. SRA nutters have done an awful lot of damage over the last thirty or forty years to individuals, families and various social groups, we should not allow them to continue their destructive and dangerous activities. When it comes to SRA activists, challenge them, give them a wide berth and stop others from being dragged into their nonsense.
