A woman who circulated conspiracy theories about a paedophile, satanic network operating out of town of Bodegraven has been ordered by judges to stop, or face fines and jail.

Alice Besselink will be fined €5,000 for every social media post she makes about the existence of the network up to a maximum of €400,000. If she continues past that limit, she faces jail. B was also told to remove all references to the conspiracy from her social media outlets.

In 2021, the council took legal action against three other people who for spreading claims that ‘satanic ritual child murders’ took place within its boundaries in the 1980s.

One of the three, Joost Knevel, claimed to have recovered memories of witnessing children being murdered in Bodegraven and of being sexually abused by Jaap van Dissel, who was then head of the public health institute RIVM.

At the time, the rumours led to the town cemetery being overwhelmed with flowers laid by conspiracy theorists, upsetting the relatives of children who are buried there, as well as threats against local officials.

In 2022, the town council took Twitter to court, demanding it remove all messages in which the town was linked to conspiracy theories about paedophiles and satanic cults, but judges in The Hague ruled this would be going too far.