In early 2015, a Satanic Ritual Abuse panic in London prompted a bizarre protest outside a church in Hampstead. As expected, the crowd included evangelical Christians, but they were also joined by some “alternative media” conspiracy types: those present included a former police officer turned New Ager named Ray Savage, and “Freeman of the Land” ideologues such as Neelu Berry and Mark Ceylon.
The panic had been engineered by a woman and her partner as part of a custody dispute: they coached her two children to make gruesome and sexually explicit allegations online, including extravagant claims about how their father was supposedly part of a cult that ate babies and made shoes out of baby skin. The whole thing fell apart very quickly, and some of those involved in promoting the hoax have since faced police and court action.
However, the story lingers on within the conspiracy milieu: the blog Hoaxstead Research has continued to chronicle the ongoing afterlife of the conspiracy theory, and the further adventures of those promoting it and their associates. In the past week, the site has been drawing attention to one Tom Dunn, an American Christian who has a line of Hampstead-related merchandise and who makes YouTube videos from a room festooned with a “We Demand Hampstead Justice Now” banner. It seems that the story was brought to Dunn’s attention some time ago by Angela Power-Disney, a British conspiracy theorist who recently withdrew from promoting the story after dwelling on the plight one of its prime movers, Sabine McNeil, who is currently in prison. (1)
Dunn and his associate Jared Chrestman are the makers of a DVD entitled Detestable: The Realities of Satanic Ritual Abuse, and of a follow-up called This is a War, on the subject of spiritual warfare. Neither work is likely to make its way into mainstream evangelical retail outlets, but these are the products of a Christian alt-fundamentalist “underground” that communicates via podcasts and hang-outs: this is also reflected in Dunn’s personal appearance, which is that of a biker rather than a clean-cut televangelist. Their YouTube channel “Through the Black” can be seen here; views of their various videos range from a few hundred to a couple of thousand.
There is, however, some trickle-up, and Dunn and Chrestman were just last month interviewed by Derek Gilbert on his View from the Bunker podcast. Gilbert has featured on this blog previously: he and his wife Sharon are in turn associated with Thomas Horn and Horn’s Defender Publishing, and while their mix of end-times teachings and science-fiction conspiracy mongering may also seem somewhat marginal to evangelicalism, Horn and the Gilberts have been mainstreamed to the extent that they have appeared on The Jim Bakker Show.
Other recent interviewees on Derek Gilbert’s podcast include Pastor Carl Gallups, a one-time Sandy Hook truther (although he later denied being such) who controversially led the prayers at an election rally in 2016, and Rabbi Zev Porat (previously blogged here, and a favourite of WND‘s Joseph Farah). According to the interview with Dunn and Chrestman, they met Gilbert earlier this year at a conference in Dallas called “Hear the Watchmen”; this is a yearly event established by Mike Kerr and Jeannie Moore.
Dunn’s videos are now being used to keep the Hampstead hoax alive back in the UK; thus one item has recently been re-uploaded to the channel of Eddie Isok, an alt-right activist whose Twitter avatar shows him posing with Anne-Marie Waters; according the blurb he has added to the YouTube upload (dots in original), “Just a little video for the child murdering protector trolls on youtube….God is digging a pit for the wicked so enjoy the madness while you can…Love eddieisok.”
Footnote
1. Another key Hampstead promoter, Belinda McKenzie, was very recently seen at the Democrats and Veterans Party conference, where she spoke about the Nephilim of the Book of Genesis and the effects of child abuse on the “umbilic region of the brain”. Self-described “police whistleblower” Jon Wedger took to the stage after her.
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