Kidwelly sex cult

Last updated

The Kidwelly sex cult was a cult that operated in the Welsh town of Kidwelly that raped children for decades until its perpetrators were arrested in 2010. Known by its members as simply "The Church", its leader Colin Batley psychologically terrorised and coerced vulnerable children into performing sexual acts, by using death threats and brainwashing. [1] Batley, three female members, and a second man were convicted of child sex offences in 2011 and jailed. [2]

Contents

Cult

The cult sexually exploited vulnerable teenagers, [3] using occult practices and literature as a means of justifying its abuse, and of brainwashing its victims. It was led by Colin Batley and his wife, as well as three other women. [2] Its sexual abuse against children spanned several decades, and was carried out first in London, then in Kidwelly in southwest Wales. [4]

The five members who went on trial departed from London for a single Kidwelly street in the 1990s. [5] The leader, Colin Batley, moved first, followed by Shelly Millar, Batley's mistress, Jacqueline Marling, and their partners. [4] Batley and three of the four female defendants were convicted of sexual offences. [6] Colin Batley [4] and the four female defendants indicated their membership with an ancient "Egyptian eye" tattoo of Horus, a hawk-headed god [7] on their arms, [4] and by collecting ancient Egyptian religious objects. [8]

The cult targeted troubled, impressionable minors, forcing them to undergo an initiation ceremony that ended with sex with an adult. Children were intimidated into participating with threats of murder. [9] One girl testified that after this ceremony (which started with Batley preaching about the occult and finished with sex), she was regularly coerced into having sex with Colin Batley at his house, [4] and with strangers at satanic orgies. In tears, she testified, "I did it because I was told to by Colin". [10] A victim explained, "Colin knew how to manipulate you, to make you believe anything he said". Children also obeyed his demands for sex out of "fear of angering the Gods." [1] Batley had Rottweiler dogs that were "vicious to everyone". [8]

The sexual abuse was often preceded with satanic ceremonies in which passages from the occultist Aleister Crowley's books The Book of the Law , The Book of Magick, and Equinox of the Gods were read out. One ceremony featured an altar with salted bread, a chalice of red wine, and an incense burner. At the end of these satanic ceremonies, members "became skyclad", meaning they disrobed, and had sex. [4]

A neighbour, John Wheatland, claimed that while working in his garden, he once saw a girl in her early teens "done up to look like a film star", who asked him whether he wanted sex. He also stated that he heard a victim crying every night. [1]

The Book of the Law

Aleister Crowley, whose literature was a major source of the cult's beliefs, was an English occultist and magician [5] who died in 1947. [1] He wrote The Book of the Law in Cairo [5] in 1904. [3] Each member's home seemed to have a laminated version of it. [11] The trial heard this book had "worrying trends and themes" about sex, including the statements "Let all chaste women be despised", "Sex with anyone is not just permissible, but to be encouraged. Prostitution is to be admired", [5] and "Some of the most passionate and permanent attachments have begun with rape. Rome was founded thereon." [7] Judge Paul Thomas QC admonished the book as "a ludicrous document". [12]

Death of Damian Batley

Colin Batley's son Damian died on 1 February 2008, when he accidentally hanged himself during a sex act. He filmed the fatal accident on his mobile phone. An inquest was told he was found naked and hanging.

A neighbour said Damian's father was "laughing and joking like he didn’t have a care in the world" on the day of the funeral, which "no normal person could comprehend". [1]

Similarity with other cults

According to the Cult Information Centre's general secretary Ian Haworth, the Kidwelly rape cult had the characteristics that are typical of a cult, which he had "heard year after year in the 32 years I've worked full time in this field". He estimated the UK has 500 to 1,000 cults, with these operating "in major cities", as well as "in quiet, rural areas". Haworth added that cult leaders often break people down, sometimes within three or four days, with methods including depriving them of food and sleep. He said this "seems to work best on people with very healthy minds". [13]

Victims

Five victims testified in court that they were lured or brought to cult members' homes where they were sexually abused, and that there were more victims who had not reported any of their abuse. [1]

One 15-year-old girl who gave evidence described being shared like a "sex toy" between cult members. A second girl was raped by Batley when she was only 11 years old, and testified, "Sex with him was a test, and if I did not pass, I would go to The Abyss." A third girl also testified to being raped by Batley when she was 11 or 12, and being coerced into having sex on camera when she was 16. [14]

Victims said the cult's abuse "has been a nightmare journey for each and every one of us". [2]

Annabelle Forest

Annabelle Forest (a pseudonym), [15] a daughter of cult member Jacqueline Marling, gave testimony which helped convict five abusers. She was forced at the age of seven to watch a sex act by her mother Jacqueline Marling on Colin Batley. When Forest was 11, Colin Batley raped her. In her early teens, she was coerced into group sex with Marling, which became something Forest was regularly forced to participate in. She was also coerced into a relationship with a second older male. Forest said "I was a schoolgirl by day and a sex slave at night", which "got so bad that at one point I tried to take my own life." Three months after giving birth to a child of Batley, aged 18, Forest was forced into prostitution, having sex with an estimated 1,800 men, with her entire earnings being taken by the cult. She said that during her many years of being abused and exploited: "Too many people looked away, too many people ignored the signs. It astonishes me that we lived in that small cul-de-sac for so many years and not one person saw anything that gave them cause for concern".

Forest detailed her experiences in her book The Devil on the Doorstep: My Escape From a Satanic Sex Cult, which she wrote to "get others to start really paying attention to the community they live in", because "there are abused children everywhere". [16] [ unreliable source? ]

Investigation

In 2010, two adult victims, one male and one female, reported the cult's abuse to the police prompting the group's arrest the same year. [4]

Chief Inspector Richard Lewis said the investigation by Dyfed–Powys Police "was a very protracted and complicated inquiry involving a very secretive group" that perpetrated "systematic and prolonged abuse of children" who "showed great courage" by reporting it. [6] Mark Bergmanski, Detective Chief Inspector, agreed "it was a very complicated and complex inquiry". [12]

The safeguarding children's board at Carmarthenshire County Council lambasted all perpetrators of "systematic, secretive and prolonged sexual abuse of children". [6]

Sentences

The cult's leader, Colin Batley, three female members, and a second man received prison sentences totaling 36 years, with the possibility of Colin Batley remaining in prison for life. They were found guilty on 47 charges including rape and other sexual crimes against children after a five-week trial [1] in February and March of 2011. [17] A fourth female member was acquitted after facing a single charge of child indecency. [18]

The head of the Welsh complex case unit in the Crown Prosecution Service said, "all of those sentenced today are guilty of horrific crimes and therefore it is also right that they have received lengthy sentences." [2]

The jury deliberated for four full days, and two half days, [11] and were offered counseling, due to the distressing nature of the offences. [4] The defendants had denied the cult's existence for the entire trial. [18]

PerpetratorAgeConviction(s)Sentence
Colin Batley (leader)48 [6] Rape (11 counts), indecent assault (three counts), pimping, causing a minor to have sex, buggery (six counts), [9] possessing indecent photographs of an underage girl (12 counts). [5] [19] Indeterminate – min. 11 years [20]
Jacqueline Marling ("second-in-command") [12] 42Aiding and abetting rape, organising prostitution for profit, persuading a child to participate in sexual activity, indecency with a child (three counts)12 years [2]
Elaine Batley (leader's wife)47Indecency with a child (three counts), sex acts with a child8 years [2]
Shelly Millar (leader's "sex slave")35Indecent activity with a child, persuading a child to participate in sexual activity5 years [2]
Vincent Barden70 [21] Sexual assault against an underage girl (two counts) [18] 3 years [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

The Satanic panic is a moral panic consisting of over 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of Satanic ritual abuse starting in the United States in the 1980s, spreading throughout many parts of the world by the late 1990s, and persisting today. The panic originated in 1980 with the publication of Michelle Remembers, a book co-written by Canadian psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder and his patient, Michelle Smith, which used the discredited practice of recovered-memory therapy to make sweeping lurid claims about satanic ritual abuse involving Smith. The allegations, which afterwards arose throughout much of the United States, involved reports of physical and sexual abuse of people in the context of occult or Satanic rituals. In its most extreme form, allegations involve a conspiracy of a global Satanic cult that includes the wealthy and elite in which children are abducted or bred for human sacrifices, pornography, and prostitution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Warren Jeffs</span> American criminal and religious leader (born 1955)

Warren Steed Jeffs is an American cult religious leader who has been convicted of several sex crimes and two assisted sex crimes involving children. He is the "prophet" of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous movement which has no affiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 2011, he was convicted of two felony counts of child sexual assault, for which he is serving a life sentence.

Rape pornography is a subgenre of pornography involving the description or depiction of rape. Such pornography either involves simulated rape, wherein sexually consenting adults feign rape, or it involves actual rape. Victims of actual rape may be coerced to feign consent such that the pornography produced deceptively appears as simulated rape or non-rape pornography. The depiction of rape in non-pornographic media is not considered rape pornography. Simulated scenes of rape and other forms of sexual violence have appeared in mainstream cinema, including rape and revenge films, almost since its advent.

Various individuals, courts and the media around the world have raised concerns about the manner in which cases of child sexual abuse are handled when they occur in congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses. An independent 2009 study in Norway was critical of how Jehovah's Witnesses dealt with cases of child sexual abuse but stated there is no indication that the rate of sexual abuse among Jehovah's Witnesses is higher than found in general society. The organization's stated position is that it abhors child sexual abuse.

Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often considered a part of the Satanic panic. A 1982 case in Kern County, California, United States, first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.

The Satanic panic in Utah is part of a broader moral panic that began in the 1980s as children in the United States, subjected to coercive interviewing techniques at the hands of zealous social workers, made unsubstantiated allegations of bizarre Satanic rituals and horrific sexual and physical abuse at the hands of day care workers. As the decade unfolded, clients of believing therapists began to make similar allegations, which are now generally seen as confabulations caused by iatrogenic therapeutic techniques such as hypnosis and automatic writing rather than the discovery of repressed memories. Despite the similarities between the allegations of adults and children, investigations produced only circumstantial, and in many cases contradictory evidence of the patients' disclosures. The court cases surrounding SRA allegations were among the most expensive and lengthy in history and produced no convictions or convictions based solely on the testimony of children that were frequently overturned or dismissed upon appeal.

This page documents Catholic Church sexual abuse cases by country.

Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia, like Catholic Church sexual abuse cases elsewhere, have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests, members of religious orders and other personnel which have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.

The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Europe has affected several dioceses in European nations. Italy is an exceptional case as the 1929 Lateran Treaty gave the Vatican legal autonomy from Italy, giving the clergy recourse to Vatican rather than Italian law.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keith Raniere</span> American NXIVM cult founder (born 1960)

Keith Allen Raniere is an American cult leader who was convicted of a pattern of racketeering activity, including human trafficking, sex offenses and fraud. Raniere co-founded NXIVM, a purported self-help multi-level marketing company offering personal development seminars and headquartered in Albany, New York. Operating from 1998 to 2018, NXIVM had 700 members at its height, including celebrities and the wealthy. Within NXIVM, Raniere was referred to as "Vanguard".

The Rochdale child sex abuse ring involved underage teenage girls in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, England. Nine men were convicted of sex trafficking and other offences including rape, trafficking girls for sex and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child in May 2012. This resulted in Greater Manchester Police launching Operation Doublet to investigate further claims of abuse with 19 men so far being convicted. Forty-seven girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation during the police investigation. The men were British Pakistanis, which led to discussion on whether the failure to investigate them was linked to the authorities' fear of being accused of racial prejudice. The girls were mainly White British.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom</span> Overview about child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom

Child sexual abuse in the United Kingdom has been reported in the country throughout its history. In about 90% of cases the abuser is a person known to the child. However, cases during the second half of the twentieth century, involving religious institutions, schools, popular entertainers, politicians, military personnel, and other officials, have been revealed and widely publicised since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Child sexual abuse rings in numerous towns and cities across the UK have also drawn considerable attention.

Child sexual abuse is a matter of concern in Australia, and is the subject of investigation and prosecution under the law, and of academic study into the prevalence, causes and social implications.

In October 2019, a 78-year-old man from South Wales was sentenced for 33 years for serious sexual offences against three of his daughters, spanning 20 years, one of whom was also his granddaughter. He frequently raped his daughters from the ages of 12, 13, or 14, fathering six of his own grandchildren with one. He also arranged for other men to rape his daughters.

Beechwood children's home was a care home for children in Mapperley in Nottinghamshire, England, where staff committed serious sexual and "sadistic" abuse against children spanning several decades before it closed in 2006. Some abusive staff received lengthy prison sentences.

The Birmingham bathing cult was a cult based in Birmingham, England that committed serious sexual offences against children for over 20 years. Its leader Michael Oluronbi gave children "holy baths" as cover for the abuse and was jailed for 34 years.

Cybersex trafficking, live streaming sexual abuse, webcam sex tourism/abuse or ICTs -facilitated sexual exploitation is a cybercrime involving sex trafficking and the live streaming of coerced sexual acts and/or rape on webcam.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 O'Sullivan, Caitlin (25 November 2018). "The satanic sex cult in a quiet Welsh village which shocked and horrified a nation". Wales Online. Archived from the original on 15 June 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Kidwelly sex cult leader Collin Batley may never be free". BBC News. 11 March 2011. Archived from the original on 17 October 2018. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  3. 1 2 Morris, Steven (11 March 2011). "Colin Batley, leader of sex cult preying on children, could spend life in jail". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 December 2018. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Misstear, Rachael; Turner, Robin (10 March 2011). "Satanic sex cult face years in jail after being found guilty of catalogue of sexual offences". Wales Online. Archived from the original on 22 April 2018. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 WalesOnline (3 February 2011). "Jury told of West Wales 'sex cult'". Wales Online. Archived from the original on 22 September 2014. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Kidwelly sex cult members face long jail sentences". BBC News. 9 March 2011. Archived from the original on 17 October 2018. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  7. 1 2 "'Sex cult' accused denies 'abyss' threat to girl". Daily Post. 18 February 2011. Archived from the original on 15 June 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  8. 1 2 O'Sullivan, Caitlin (27 November 2018). "The Bristol prostitutes and the paedophile Satanic sex cult which horrified a country". Bristol Post. Archived from the original on 28 November 2018. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  9. 1 2 "Paedophile cult leader convicted for 'satanic' rape campaign". The Guardian. 9 March 2011. Archived from the original on 26 December 2018. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  10. ↑ "Satanic cult leader facing jail for child rapes". Metro. 9 March 2011. Archived from the original on 22 February 2017. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  11. 1 2 "Five found guilty in sex cult trial". Wales Online. 9 March 2011. Archived from the original on 4 June 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  12. 1 2 3 "Sex cult leader 'could die in jail'". The Independent. 11 March 2011. Archived from the original on 14 March 2011. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  13. ↑ "Sex abuse cult had 'classic traits' says expert". BBC News. 9 March 2011. Archived from the original on 2 April 2016. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  14. ↑ "'Batley Lord' lies of Satanic cult sex beast". Yorkshire Post. 11 March 2011. Archived from the original on 15 June 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  15. ↑ "Annabelle Forest". Simon & Schuster. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
  16. ↑ Porter, Tom (22 September 2014). "Woman Tells of Years of Sexual Abuse in Welsh Satanic Cult". International Business Times. Archived from the original on 26 December 2017. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  17. ↑ "Kidwelly sex cult: Town unaware of 'evil paedophile'". BBC News. 9 March 2011. Archived from the original on 17 October 2018. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  18. 1 2 3 "West Wales satanic cult leader guilty of rape". South Wales Argus. 9 March 2011. Archived from the original on 15 June 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  19. ↑ "'Cult' trial man denies charges". Oxford Mail. 16 February 2011. Archived from the original on 15 June 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  20. ↑ "Jail for 'evil' sex cult leader". Belfast Telegraph. 11 March 2011. Archived from the original on 15 June 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
  21. ↑ "Man in dock over cul-de-sac sex case". Bedford Today. 16 February 2011. Archived from the original on 15 June 2019. Retrieved 15 June 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.