On July 15-17, 2023, Facebook users (1,2,3,4,5), including those supporting the pro-Kremlin conservative movement party, shared a video clip from the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ program InfoWars, in which the invited guest, Kevin Annett, talks about the satanic cult, the “Ninth Circle.”
According to Kevin Annett, the cult of the Ninth Circle is involved in child trade and ritual sacrifice of children, and, in turn, the cult is linked to high hierarchs of the Catholic Church and members of the British royal family. According to Annett, in 2013, a trial was held against Pope Benedict for child trafficking at the “International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State” in Brussels. According to him, the trial was also underway against Pope Francis in the same court, also on charges of child trafficking. Annett also claims that the “International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State” found Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip guilty of the disappearance of 10 children from a Catholic children’s boarding school in British Columbia, Canada on October 10, 1964. In addition, Annett links the cult of the “Ninth Circle” and the ritual sacrifice of children with the mass grave of babies found in the territory of the mother and baby home in Tuam, Ireland.
On July 15, a Georgian-language Facebook user published another video on a similar topic, according to the description of which “members of the European royal family kill naked children for fun at man hunting parties.” In the video, American conspiracy theorist Robert Steele claims that American elites are abusing children, trading their organs and drinking their blood during funeral rituals. As one of the examples of systemic violence against children, Steele cites the “Pizzagate conspiracy theory.”
The claims voiced in the videos disseminated on Facebook are without evidence and substantiated by any evidence: 1) the trials against Pope Benedict and Pope Francis on charges of trafficking were never held; 2) Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were never found guilty of abducting children from a Canadian boarding school; 3) the mass cemetery of children found in Ireland has no connection with the satanic cult; 4) The claim that the American elite runs a child sex-trafficking scheme, trades in child organs, and engages in child sacrifice repeats the QAnon conspiracy theory and is not supported by facts.
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Who is Kevin Annett and which conspiracies does he amplify?
The guest on the Info Wars program, who talks about the murders of children, is Kevin Annett. He was a pastor of the Canadian Protestant Church, the United Church of Canada. The Church excommunicated Annette in 1997. Since 1992, Annette served at St. Andrew’s Church in Port Alberni. In 1997, Kevin Annett was excommunicated from the church and his case was considered by an official commission. During the discussion, the commission heard several witnesses. The comments of the witnesses are given in the official document of the case. The comments of witnesses demonstrate that during his service at St. Andrew’s Church, Annett had a difficult and conflicted relationship with the other pastors and administration of the church, as well as with the parishioners. The document also mentions that in 1995, Annett wrote a resignation letter, on the basis of which the church stopped cooperating with him and he no longer performed his duties. However, Annett and his family were allowed to stay in a house provided by the church, and the church continued to pay him a salary for several months. In addition, Annett was placed on probation and ordered to undergo a program to improve his pastor’s skills and undergo a psychiatric and/or psychological evaluation. During the observation period, it was revealed that Kevin Annett was unfit for the role of a pastor. Annett contested the decisions, but then he did not appear at the hearing of the appeal. Finally, in 1997, the United Church of Canada finally cut ties with him.
Kevin Annett labels himself as a human rights defender, who is the leader of the movement to expose “crimes committed by the church.” An issue that Annett manipulates with particularly often is the systemic violations of children’s rights in boarding schools for indigenous children in Canada. In most cases, the schools were under the control of the church and they played an important role in erasing the culture of the indigenous people of Canada. In 2008, National Center for Truth and Reconciliation was formed as part of the state’s accountability and reparations process, which concluded that at least 4,100 children died in the boarding system as a result of abuse, neglect, illness and accidents. The topic became a particularly hot topic in 2021, when a mass grave of 215 Indian children was discovered in Canada.
Kevin Annett uses this historical problem in Canada to amplify conspiracy theories.
“Unfortunately, while he draws on the basic reality of the schools, Annett fabricates a host of horrific stories he claims are facts. Annett’s stories are often accompanied by conspiracy theories that vilify legitimate church, political and Indigenous leaders”– notes the United Church of Canada.
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Conspiracy theories about Pope Benedict and Pope Francis
The conspiracy theory about the “Ninth Circle” cult was essentially developed by Kevin Annett, and he has been accusing various clergymen of being members of this cult for years. The “International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State,” which Annett talks about in the distributed video and presents it as an international court, is a blog founded by Annett himself, whose website is currently no longer available, and it does not represent any kind of legal body or official organization. Accordingly, any kind of trial against Pope Benedict and Pope Francis could not be held by the tribunal invented by Annette.
False claims that Pope Benedict and Pope Francis were involved in child trafficking and that their legal responsibility has been raised in the past have been verified by various fact-checking agencies. For example, in 2013, it was alleged that Pope Benedict resigned to avoid arrest. The information was verified by the American fact-checking agency Snopes. Pope Benedict is the first pope to resign in the last 600 years. The Pope cited age as the reason for his resignation, but his decision has been the subject of various speculations. Shortly after his resignation, a false claim was voiced as if an arrest warrant had been issued for Pope Benedict for his involvement in child trafficking. The source of this claim was Kevin Annett’s “International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State.” Snopes notes that shortly after Francis took over as Pope, Annette’s blog reported about a new arrest warrant for Pope Francis.
In 2021, false reports of Pope Francis’ involvement in trafficking and other crimes continued to spread. Canadian website Conservatove Beaverm reported that Pope Francis was arrested on various charges, including possession of child pornography, trafficking and incest. The false information has been verified by various fact-checking services and media outlets, including PolitiFact, Snopes, Reuters, USA Today and the Insider.
- Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were never found guilty of abducting children from a Canadian boarding school
The false claim, as if Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were found guilty of the kidnapping-disappearance of 10 Indian children from a boarding school in the Canadian city of Kamloops was also spread in 2021 and 2022. Then these claims were verified by the American fact-checking agency PolitiFact and the British service FullFact. The claims argued that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s arrest warrant was issued by the “General International Court of Justice in Brussels” and the British royal family was found guilty of kidnapping 10 children while visiting a boarding school in Kamloops in 1964. First of all, it should be noted that in 1964, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip did not visit the Kamloops boarding school or any other boarding school in Canada. In addition, the “Brussels International Court of Common Law” is also a fictional body of Kevin Annett and has no legal jurisdiction. Accusing the British royal family of child abduction is another conspiracy theory by Annett.
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The mass cemetery of children found in Ireland has no connection with the satanic cult
In 2014, it became known that there was a mass burial of hundreds of children in an underground water tank on the territory of a mother and baby home in Tuam, Ireland. Mother and baby homes in Ireland served as shelters for unmarried mothers and also served as orphan asylums and adoption agencies. The Tuam Mother and Baby Home operated from the 1920s to 1961 and was run by Catholic nuns.
The discovery of the children’s burial site was made possible by the research of Catherine Corless, a local historian enthusiast. Corless traced the death certificates of 796 children, but there was no information on the location of these children’s graves. The Irish government established a special commission to investigate the activities of the mothers’ and children’s homes. According to the commission, 3,251 children were registered at the Tuam Mother and Baby Home during its operation, of which 802 died of various causes. And in total, within the framework of the investigation, it was revealed that about 9,000 children died in 18 such homes. According to the Irish government, the investigation revealed that “an oppressive and brutally misogynistic culture existed” in the country. In 2021, the Prime Minister of Ireland apologized to the surviving residents of the mother and children’s homes on behalf of the state, noting that what happened was a “dark, difficult and shameful chapter” in the history of Ireland.
According to the investigation commission, the cause of death of children in the Tuam orphanage was mostly various diseases – tuberculosis, flu, gastroenteritis, meningitis, measles. Therefore, the death of children has nothing to do with any kind of satanic cult or ritual sacrifice. As with the case of boarding schools for Indian children in Canada, Kevin Annett uses the deaths of children in orphanages in Ireland to develop conspiracy theories.
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Robert Steele was a famous American conspiracy theorist who amplified conspiracy theories about the sex-trafficking of children by the elites.
Robert Steele shared the conspiracy theories of the far-right group QAnon. According to the QAnon conspiracy theory, the US is run by a cabal of pedophiles and Satan worshipers who have a global system of child sex trafficking, and former US President Donald Trump is the only one who can stop them. These claims were posted on the 4chan forum by a user under the pseudonym Q, who claimed to be a high-ranking government official. Robert Steele also claimed on the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show that there is a colony of abducted children on Mars. Steele also denied the existence of the Coronavirus. He died of coronavirus in August 2021.
“Pizzagate,” which Steele cites in the video as an example of covert child abuse schemes, is also a conspiracy theory. This conspiracy theory emerged before the 2016 US presidential election. According to the theory, Hillary and Bill Clinton used Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington DC, for a child abduction and trafficking scheme. The accusations were baseless and were not confirmed.
Robert Steele’s video features a caption that reads “ITNJ Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Human Trafficking and Child Sex Abuse” which gives the video an official character and creates the impression that the matter is being discussed in court. In fact, the “International Tribunal of Natural Law” is an organization with a dubious reputation established in Great Britain, which spreads various conspiracy theories. The organization does not have any legal status or jurisdiction.
It should be noted that the assertion published by the Georgian-language Facebook account, that members of the European royal family hunt people for fun, is another conspiracy theory amplified by Kevin Annett. The same claims were voiced in 2015 and were then debunked by the American fact-checking service Snopes.
About the Source
Kevin Annett talked about conspiracy theories related to the “Ninth Circle” cult on Alex Jones’ InfoWars show. Alex Jones is an American conspiracy theorist who owns the media platform InfoWars, a platform that amplifies a number of conspiracy theories in the form of shows, podcasts and articles. In 2018, various platforms, including Meta, Apple, YouTube, and Spotify, removed Alex Jones’ content for using hate speech and violating those platforms’ rules.
Alex Jones has argued for years that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in the US, which killed 26 people, was staged by the government to ban firearms in the US, and that no one actually died in the incident. Jones also claimed that the parents of the dead children were actors. The families of the victims sued Jones over the false allegations. According to the families, they were the target of threats, intimidation and harassment from Jones’ followers. The court ordered Jones to pay $1.5 billion in restitution to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, prompting Jones to file for bankruptcy in 2022.
Georgian-language users that shared the video
Fantina Fantina
Facebook account Fantina Fantina along with her other accounts (1,2) regularly spreads fake information. “Myth Detector” has debunked the disinformation spread by the user many times in the past.
Nini Khundadze
Facebook user Nini Khundadze is a supporter of the “Conservative Movement” and its related television, Alt-Info. She often spreads false information on various topics, which were debunked by “Myth Detector” in the past.
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M Art Ianeli (Nino Nemsveridze)
Facebook account M Art Ianeli has been disseminating disinformation in the past as well. For more information, see the articles:
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