A Dutch judge on Monday ordered a woman to stop spreading a false conspiracy theory that a ring of Satan-worshipping paedophiles had been operating in a small town, or face fines or prison.
Prosecutors in Bodegraven-Reeuwijk in the western Netherlands brought the unidentified woman to court after she refused to stop spreading online information about unfounded rumours that have plagued the town since 2021.
The woman "ignored a request to stop and remove her statements and began to make even more violent statements", the Gelderland District Court said.
As a result, a man entered the Bodegraven municipal offices in an "intimidating way", the town's customer service line was flooded with threatening calls, and its mayor received anonymous threatening messages, the court said in a document posted online.
A judge imposed a ban on further online postings and ordered the woman to remove all previous comments "within 48 hours".
If she continued she would be fined 5,000 euros ($5,600) every time she posted something, running up to a maximum of 400,000 euros.
If that amount is reached and the woman persists with her posts, she faces a 60-day jail sentence.
The saga began in 2021 when three men spread unfounded rumours about a satanic paedophile ring that had abused children in the leafy town around 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of The Hague.
Dozens of people flocked to the municipality of around 34,000 people to lay flowers and messages on the graves of the alleged victims after conspiracy theorists latched on to the claims.
One of the men behind the spreading of the rumours said he had been abused in the 1980s and had since recovered memories of witnessing satanic rituals and the murder of young children.
But the accuser and one of the others were convicted of sedition, threats and defamation by a Dutch court in 2022, which ruled that there was no proof of any satanic paedophile network.
The accuser was later handed a 15-month jail sentence, and neither man has made any further claims since their conviction, the judge said.
But the woman took over from the three men, the judge said.
"Her statements became increasingly systematic in nature, increasingly sharp in tone... mentioning alleged perpetrators, victims, so-called cover-ups and calls for action against them," the judge said.
"Once again the personal privacy of residents in the municipality is being infringed on."
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