Europe & UK Cult News: 6–12 July 2026

By He Who Shan't Be Named

Published 13 Jul 2026

Europe & UK Cult News
UK
Romania
Italy
Czech Republic
Ireland
Switzerland
Europe
Andrew Tate
Tristan Tate
SSPX
Unisono
Alfie Coleman
Modern Mystery School

Europe & UK Cult News: 6–12 July 2026 featured image — Tristan and Andrew Tate.

The week of 6–12 July carried cult and high-control-group stories across Europe and the UK: Romanian prosecutors expand the Tate brothers’ trafficking case with new alleged offences including complicity in trafficking a minor, UK and Irish outlets revisit Society of St Pius X chapels after Rome’s schism decree, Fox News reports Game of Thrones actress Hannah Murray’s account of psychosis after a 2017 wellness cult ordeal, Alfie Coleman, a neo-Nazi from Essex, England, is jailed after a Tesco “kill list” terror plot, La Stampa covers a postponed Turin trial of Unisono leader Carla Stagno, and Czech broadcaster Prima prepares the cult drama My nejsme sekta. Summaries draw on monitored European and UK outlets. Full source links follow.

Romanian prosecutors expand Tate trafficking case

Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) announced on 3 July that it has expanded its investigation of Andrew and Tristan Tate with further alleged offences, Romania Insider reported on 6 July. Alongside the human-trafficking and rape accusations that underpinned the 2024 case, prosecutors have added money laundering, influencing statements, removal of assets from seizure, and complicity in the trafficking of minors. The brothers deny the allegations and are presumed innocent unless convicted.

According to DIICOT’s new case file, Andrew Tate allegedly threatened two victims and two witnesses between January 2023 and January 2024 so they would withdraw or falsify statements, and sold five luxury cars in the UK despite a prohibition on disposal. Prosecutors say Tristan Tate recruited three victims between 2018 and 2021 by faking romantic interest, then sexually exploited them through pornographic videos and videochat. DIICOT further alleges the brothers sexually exploited a 17-year-old, managed her videochat accounts and financial targets, and obtained about 1.53 million US dollars from that exploitation. Tristan Tate is also accused of intimidating 11 witnesses. Prosecutors said they had seized five luxury vehicles belonging to the brothers.

In related reporting on 7 July, Romania Insider covered Romania’s role co-leading Operation GLOBAL CHAIN, a Europol-coordinated anti-trafficking sweep under EMPACT, the EU’s platform for joint action against organised crime. The five-day operation ran from 8 to 12 June across 59 countries. The outlet presented it as Romania’s wider trafficking work in the same period as the Tate case file, without linking the brothers to those arrests. Europol reported 1,024 arrests, including 334 suspected traffickers, and identification of 2,070 victims and potential victims (1,908 adults and 162 minors), with sexual exploitation the dominant form of harm.

UK and Irish SSPX chapels after Vatican schism decree

Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta of the Society of Saint Pius X

UK and Irish outlets returned this week to Society of St Pius X (SSPX) chapels after the Vatican’s early-July schism decree. SSPX is a traditionalist Catholic fraternity that rejected post-Vatican II reforms and operates outside full communion with Rome. The Daily Star reported on 11 July that it retains an organised UK foothold despite Rome’s crackdown after unauthorised bishop consecrations at Écône, Switzerland, on 1 July. The Holy See declared SSPX bishops and priests schismatic and excommunicated, warned lay followers who “formally adhere” that they may face the same penalty, and said SSPX confessions and marriages are now invalid. Superior general Fr Davide Pagliarani rejected the sanctions as “objectively unjust and invalid,” EWTN News reported via the Star. Brandon Taylor of the University of Lancashire told the paper the immediate impact for many lay attendees is likely “more symbolic than practical,” and that UK chapels sustained by strong lay networks are “likely to remain resilient.”

In Cork, Ireland, Echo Live reported on 12 July that Latin Mass continued as usual at Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Shanakiel the Sunday after the decree, with about 100 worshippers. Parish priest Fr Jules Doutrebente told the congregation there was no schism because canon law allows action in necessity, and that the congregation names and prays for Pope Leo at every Mass. Echo Live said roughly 500 people attend SSPX weekly Masses in Ireland. Freedom Times covered the Écône ordinations and Vatican decree in the previous week’s roundup.

Hannah Murray describes psychosis after wellness cult

Fox News, a US entertainment outlet, reported on 6 July that Game of Thrones actress Hannah Murray mistook a psychiatric hospital for a palace after joining what she described as a wellness cult in 2017. In her memoir The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness, Murray writes that she spent 28 days at Gordon Hospital in Bloomsbury, London, after a psychotic break following a five-day retreat with the group in London. She says she entered the hospital “extremely psychotic” and left “somewhat less so.”

According to the Fox News account of the memoir, Murray was introduced through an “energy healer” she met on the set of her 2017 film Detroit, then attended classes with an unnamed organisation and met its leader, whom she calls Steve and once believed to be God. She does not name the group. Anonymous former members writing online have claimed the wellness organisation was the Modern Mystery School (MMS), a spirituality group formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Mystery School. Those claims are unverified in the Fox News coverage and in Murray’s public account. Dialogue Ireland, an Irish cult-monitoring blog that has covered MMS since 2011, offers background on the organisation’s history, European presence, and criticism from former participants. MedPage Today’s 8 July psychiatry briefing noted the same Fox News item among other US psychiatry headlines.

Essex neo-Nazi jailed over Tesco “kill list”

Alfie Coleman after sentencing at the Old Bailey

Alfie Coleman, a neo-Nazi who drew up a “kill list” of Tesco customers and colleagues and planned a mass gun attack, was jailed for 13 and a half years at the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, Sky News reported on 8 July. Coleman was 19 when MI5, the UK’s domestic security service, caught him in a sting trying to buy a Makarov pistol, magazines and ammunition with savings from a part-time supermarket job. He had branded some colleagues and shoppers “race traitors” for having non-white partners, noted number plates, and idolised Adolf Hitler and Jo Cox’s murderer Thomas Mair.

Judge Richard Marks KC treated him as a “dangerous offender,” a UK sentencing status that can mean longer custody and extended supervision, rejecting Coleman’s claim that racist statements were only intrusive thoughts or bravado. Coleman, now 22, of Great Notley in Essex, pleaded guilty to attempting to possess a prohibited firearm and ammunition and to possessing terrorist material. A jury convicted him of preparing acts of terrorism after a retrial. Counter-terrorism officers said he had been radicalised online from age 14. Commander Helen Flanagan of the Met urged parents to watch children’s online activity and contact Action Counters Terrorism, the UK tip line for extremism concerns, early if worried.

Turin Unisono cult trial postponed

Turin courtroom where the Unisono case was adjourned

La Stampa reported on 11 July that a Turin preliminary hearing judge postponed what had been expected as a sentencing day for Carla Stagno, the self-styled “santona” (holy woman) of the Unisono cult, and her companion Gabriele Limongi, an osteopath tried with her under Italy’s abbreviated procedure. Judge Agostino Pasquariello ordered further evidentiary examination.

According to the paper, Unisono gathered hundreds of followers around Stagno, who claimed to be an alien entity, the reincarnation of Marie Curie, and an artificial intelligence able to heal. At a day-long September 2020 assembly in a theatre in Venaria, Italy, during the Covid pandemic, about 300 members filled the hall. La Stampa describes “theatres of mortification” in which sick people were displayed and mocked: a man exhibited on a stretcher; a paraplegic girl denigrated before the crowd; a wheelchair user whom Stagno held up as a warning.

«Vedete com’è diventato? È così perché non fa quello che gli dico.»

Show English translation

“See what he has become? He is like this because he does not do what I tell him.”

Phones were handed to stewards with radios and bulletproof vests before anyone entered the auditorium. A witness told La Stampa that Stagno said the security was for her own protection: that she could heal everyone, that she had fled an American base as an alien being, and that people wanted to kill her. A woman at Venaria filmed scenes from the gathering and delivered the video to Italy’s postal police, which opened the investigation.

Stagno is the lead defendant on a charge of associazione a delinquere (criminal association). Prosecutors allege she persuaded dozens of sick people to stop medical treatment or take drugs at random, causing serious injuries and, in one case, death. La Stampa recounts the case of Marilyn, who obeyed Stagno, left doctors at the cancer centre in Candiolo, Italy, and fled hospital before urgent surgery for stage-four breast cancer. She died on 14 July 2021 after months of pain from brain metastases. According to the paper, medical experts Yao Chen and Antonio Bernardo, in a technical report for prosecutor Barbara Badellino, found a probable causal link between that interruption of care from February 2020 and the earlier onset of those metastases and her death. Pasquariello adjourned so the experts can answer the judges’ questions on that finding.

Czech Prima prepares cult drama My nejsme sekta

Petr Lněnička in Prima’s series My nejsme sekta

Czech media trade site Médiář reported on 11 July that TV Prima’s streaming platform Prima+ is preparing a six-part psychological drama titled My nejsme sekta (“We are not a cult”), written and directed by Andrea Sedláčková and produced by Good TV. The fiction centres on lawyer Denisa (Tatiana Dyková), assigned to defend young veterinarian Martina (Sarah Haváčová) on a murder charge, as the case opens onto psychological manipulation and closed communities. Matěj Hádek plays manipulative-community leader Robert. Petr Lněnička, known as detective Jiří Markovič in Metoda Markovič, again plays an investigator.

Sedláčková told Médiář she wanted to show how intelligent, ordinary people can accept rules the outside world calls abnormal, and how hard it is to leave such a community:

„My nejsme sekta je kriminální příběh o tom, jak mohou inteligentní a v zásadě normální lidé postupně přijmout pravidla, která jsou z pohledu okolního světa zcela nenormální, jaké důsledky to může mít pro jejich životy. Chtěla jsem popsat vnitřní fungování sekty a jak těžké je takové společenství opustit.“

Show English translation

“My nejsme sekta is a crime story about how intelligent and basically normal people can gradually accept rules that look completely abnormal from outside, and what consequences that can have for their lives. I wanted to describe the inner workings of a cult and how hard it is to leave such a community.”

Beyond Europe

These items were reported on European outlets we monitor. The events themselves sit outside the UK and EU.

Australian Colt family incest cult revisited

Members of the Colt family kinship group

The Irish Mirror on 11 July republished reporting on the Colt family, a court pseudonym for an incestuous kinship group found in a remote Australian farming valley. Authorities eventually removed children from a makeshift camp lacking running water and toilets after years of harm reports. The piece says 38 blood relatives lived in squalor, with children so severely affected by inbreeding that some could not speak or see, and that abuse spanned four generations. New South Wales children’s-court material and later criminal proceedings against several adults form the backbone of the account. Many charges were later dropped or reduced. Only some defendants received custodial sentences. The Irish Mirror’s retelling draws heavily on earlier Australasian coverage rather than a fresh court development this week.

Mozambique nun urges catechesis against cult recruitment

Vatican News published on 11 July an interview with Sister Graça António Cuamba Guitate of the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on her dissertation about the proliferation of cults in Mozambique. She told Vatican Radio that many young people leave the Catholic Church for such movements because they feel they lack space, responsibility and opportunity at home, and that strong biblical formation and community catechesis (church teaching for the faithful) can limit recruitment. When youth join those groups, she said, they are often made pastors quickly and given tasks and promises the parish did not offer. She urged young Catholics not to be deceived by false promises.