Officials from a Dutch town plagued by conspiracy theorists, who believe a paedophile satanic gang operates there, have again gone to court to silence them.

This time Bodegraven-Reeuwijk council is asking judges to stop a woman spreading the conspiracy theories, which she began circulating a few months ago, the Volkskrant said on Wednesday.

The council says Alice Besselink must stop identifying people as “perpetrator, victim, witness or cover-upper of satanic, paedophile crimes” within the town, and should remove all the messages she has posted within 48 hours, or face a fine of up to €200,000.

In 2021, the council took legal action against three 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.

During Tuesday’s trial, Besselink was supported by dozens of people on the public benches plus demonstrators outside the court, the Volkskrant said.

She ended her defence by asking that Michael Jackson’s Heal the World was played “for all the children”. The court gave the go ahead, the paper said. “Besselink was obviously not bothered that the singer himself had been associated with child abuse.”

The court will rule in two weeks.