Europe & UK Cult News: 13–19 July 2026

By He Who Shan't Be Named

Published 20 Jul 2026

Europe & UK Cult News
UK
Europe
France
Finland
Greece
Andrew Tate
Tristan Tate
John Grant
Toudon
Jeffrey Epstein
SSPX

Europe & UK Cult News: 13–19 July 2026 featured image — Andrew and Tristan Tate after their Miami arrest on a UK extradition request.

The week of 13–19 July carried cult and high-control-group stories across Europe and the UK: US Marshals arrest Andrew and Tristan Tate in Miami on a UK extradition request after 38 further sexual-offence charges, a former Baptist church youth leader is convicted at Wood Green Crown Court of decades of sexual assaults on vulnerable young men, French gendarmes dismantle a shamanic cult in Toudon near Nice, a BBC survivor account describes recruitment in Paris into Jeffrey Epstein’s circle that she says he ran “like a cult,” Finnish wellness coach Aki Manninen describes leaving a Pentecostal revival movement he calls a cult, and archaeologists on Ithaca document an ancient hero-cult shrine to Odysseus. Summaries draw on monitored European and UK outlets. Full source links follow.

Tate brothers arrested in Miami on UK extradition request

Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested in Miami on Saturday 18 July after the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service announced 38 further charges and sought their extradition, Sky News, the BBC, and La Libre reported. US Marshals took the dual UK–US nationals into custody on a sealed warrant. The CPS said the new case follows a further file from Bedfordshire Police and brings the total number of alleged victims in the UK case to seven. The brothers deny the allegations and are presumed innocent unless convicted.

Andrew Tate, 39, faces seven further counts of rape, three of arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation, three of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and 19 charges relating to indecent images of a child and extreme pornography. Tristan Tate, 38, faces one count of sexual assault, two of rape, and three of arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation. The CPS said the 38 additional charges sit on top of 21 existing ones and relate to alleged offences between July 2010 and August 2017. Earlier UK charges concern three other alleged victims between 2012 and 2016.

Malcolm McHaffie, head of the CPS special crime division, said charging decisions followed receipt of that Bedfordshire file. Bedfordshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Karena Thomas urged the public not to speculate and said there is “no place for male violence against women and girls.” Lawyer Matt Jury, representing four alleged victims, said Andrew Tate now faces “the real prospect of extradition to the UK.” The brothers’ US lawyer, Joseph McBride, called them “innocent” and described the new charges as an “egregious abuse” of US authority. The Tates already face separate proceedings in Romania stemming from their 2022 arrest there.

Former church youth leader convicted of decades of sex attacks

John Grant, a 77-year-old former church youth leader and deacon with links to Baptist churches across the UK, including Billingham Baptist Church in Teesside, England, and Muswell Hill Baptist Church in north London, was convicted at Wood Green Crown Court of a string of sexual offences spanning more than four decades, Teesside Live reported on 13 July. He was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault, six of indecent assault, and two of causing another person to engage in non-penetrative sexual activity. Sentencing is set for 11 September at the same court. The offences relate to four people.

Detective Constable Liam Levy, who led the Metropolitan Police investigation, said the victim-survivors were “vulnerable young men who put their trust in Grant through his church association,” and that Grant groomed them through coercive control before sexually assaulting them. Police first learned of the offending in 2023 after one survivor reported repeated assaults. Enquiries then identified further complainants linked to Muswell Hill, Billingham, and north London youth groups Grant had run. Grant was also a member of Broomsknoll Church of Scotland in Airdrie between 1965 and 1970 and Ward Green Baptist Church in Barnsley between 1973 and 1984. His most senior role was as Moderator for the London Baptist Association at Muswell Hill. Detectives believe there may be more victims and have asked anyone with information to contact police.

French gendarmes dismantle shamanic cult near Nice

Gendarmerie seizure at the Toudon property

French gendarmes ended a nine-month investigation on 11 July by raiding a property in Toudon, a village in the Alpes-Maritimes near Nice, during a ceremony, actu Nice and France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur reported. Three organisers, a woman aged 68, her partner aged 62, and another woman aged 42, were arrested. Prosecutors say the trio ran shamanic ceremonies involving illegal psychotropic plants and preparations, with possible psychological subjection of participants. On site, investigators found 14 people consuming or about to consume hallucinogenic mushrooms and plant preparations. All participants received medical care. Gendarmerie commander Joseph Fraigneaud told France 3 what struck officers was the passivity of those present:

« Ce qui nous a frappé lorsque nous sommes intervenus, c'est la passivité des participants. Ils étaient dans un état second, n'avaient aucune réaction. »

Show English translation

“What struck us when we intervened was the passivity of the participants. They were in a second state, had no reaction.”

Seizures included hundreds of peyote cacti, hallucinogenic mushrooms, diviners’ sage, and derived preparations, plus vehicles, cash, and luxury goods. France 3 reported the organisers had taken in more than €120,000 over three years through word-of-mouth recruitment, with “several dozen” potential victims. The three were charged with drug trafficking, fraudulent abuse of psychological or physical subjection in an organised group, maintaining a person in a state of subjection, illegal practice of medicine, administering a harmful substance to a vulnerable person, and money laundering. They were placed under judicial supervision. The Nice prosecutor’s specialised unit and the Puget-Théniers research brigade led the case. French outlets label the case dérives sectaires (cultic excesses).

Survivor account of coercive control inside Epstein’s circle

Composite illustration for the BBC Epstein investigation

BBC News Investigations published on 18 July a rare account from “Anya” (not her real name), who says she was introduced in Paris through modelling scout Daniel Siad before spending years as one of Jeffrey Epstein’s “assistants” in flats on East 66th Street in Manhattan. Siad’s name appears thousands of times in the US government’s Epstein files. His lawyer said he was unavailable, and he has previously denied knowing the threat Epstein posed.

In that BBC account, Anya says Epstein described his operation as “like a cult, and he was the cult leader.” Those are the survivor’s words — cult and cult leader — for the coercive system she says she lived under: financial control, isolation, psychological demeaning, obsessive monitoring of women’s bodies, and forced unnecessary surgery. After Epstein’s 2019 death, she says his brother Mark told her she had to leave the apartment (Mark Epstein denies he knew of his brother’s wrongdoing).

Former assistant Sarah Kellen told the US House Oversight Committee that Epstein was “very good at just decimating your ability to make your own decisions.” Clinical psychologist Dr Tara Quinn-Cirillo told the BBC adults can be groomed: “You can be vulnerable to this.” After Epstein’s 2008 conviction for abusing a teenage girl, Anya says he largely targeted adult women from Russia and eastern Europe who still looked teenage.

Finnish coach describes exit from Pentecostal cult

Finnish wellness coach Aki Manninen told Vappu Pimiä’s podcast Valo Pimiässä, covered by Ilta-Sanomat on 14 July, that he left the Pentecostal congregation he grew up in only as an adult, and that he no longer trusts any institution or cult. Manninen and his wife Rita Niemi-Manninen first became known from the Finnish reality show Temptation Island Suomi. He is writing a memoir and now frames what he lived through as spiritual violence: another person building a religious identity inside a child until it breaks them.

– Mulla siitä lahkosta pois pyristeleminen meni ihan tonne vanhemmalle iälle saakka. Tänä päivänä en luota mihinkään instituuttiin enkä lahkoon. – Se lahko yritti niin paljon rikkoa, Aki sanoo.

Show English translation

“Getting free of that cult went on into my older years. Today I do not trust any institution or cult. That cult tried so hard to break [me],” Aki says.

Rules at home were strict: no music (a friend’s Dingo cassette was thrown away), no dancing, no television when he was small. When he fell in love at 18, his mother told him he could not be with a girlfriend from outside a believing family. He still credits summer conferences with friendship and community, but says the community’s slavishness is what damages a person:

– Ja niin kuin sanoin, siellä oli paljon hyvääkin. Mutta se yhteisön orjallisuus, mikä siihen tuli, se rikkoo ihmisen.

Show English translation

“And as I said, there was a lot of good there too. But that slavishness of the community that came with it, that breaks a person.”

Ancient Odysseus hero-cult shrine documented on Ithaca

Archaeological finds linked to the Odysseus sanctuary on Ithaca

As Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey reaches cinemas, archaeologists from the University of Ioannina say they have the strongest evidence yet of a public sanctuary devoted to Odysseus at Agios Athanasios on the Greek island of Ithaca, BBC Future and The Debrief reported. Finds include a small bronze bust of the Homeric hero and roof tiles stamped “to Odysseus” and “of Odysseus” (ΟΔΥCCEOC), the genitive form used at sanctuaries to mark a building as belonging to a deity or hero. The Greek Ministry of Culture says the complex played a major role in the religious and civic life of Hellenistic and early Roman Ithacans and likely drew pilgrims.

Organised worship at the site is thought to have begun by the late fourth century BCE, centuries after Homeric composition. Lead archaeologist Yannos Lolos described “new and strong inscriptional evidence” linking the School of Homer complex to the hero. Colleague Christina Marabea notes that tiles reading “of Odysseus” match the pattern of “of Poseidon” or “of Apollo” at other sanctuaries. The finds do not prove Odysseus was a historical person. They do show that ancient Greeks practised a long-running hero cult around the figure of the Odyssey.

Beyond Europe

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

Botswana warns citizens forced into Russian combat

Belgium’s La Libre reported on 18 July that Botswana’s Ministry of International Relations says growing numbers of Botswanans have been deceived into arrangements that end with forced participation in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The ministry said it continues to receive “heartrending” calls from citizens already on the front line describing perilous conditions. The statement did not give a current headcount. In December the government had said at least two young Botswanans may have been recruited. In mid-February the collective All Eyes on Wagner published names of more than 1,400 Africans it said Moscow recruited between January 2023 and September 2025, with more than 300 reported dead, the largest contingents from Egypt, Cameroon, and Ghana.

Turkey arrests 119 over alleged Islamic State links

Turkish security forces during a counter-terror operation

Turkey’s foreign ministry said on Saturday that gendarmerie forces arrested 119 suspects across 30 provinces, including Istanbul, Ankara, and Adana, over alleged links to Islamic State (Daesh), La Libre reported. Suspects are accused of membership, social-media propaganda, and financing the group through people and so-called charities tied to the organisation. The ministry linked the sweep to wider counter-terror work after a suspected Islamic State–linked man was killed in a late-June shootout south of Ankara, weeks before a NATO summit in the capital, and after 209 further arrests in Ankara of people suspected of Islamic State or far-left ties.

Canadian SSPX followers after Vatican schism decree

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and an SSPX gathering

Canadian magazine The Walrus published on 13 July a Q&A with papal scholar Michael W. Higgins on what Rome’s early-July schism decree means for Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) followers in Canada. The piece describes SSPX as a traditionalist Catholic fraternity founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre after Vatican II, and stays with the schism decree’s meaning for Canadian followers rather than allegations of coercive control. Higgins recounts Lefebvre’s 1970 foundation, the 1988 excommunications after unauthorised consecrations, the 2009 lifting of those penalties, and Pope Leo XIV’s response after four further bishops were ordained without papal mandate on 1 July. Clerics involved were excommunicated, and Leo went further than predecessors by warning that priests and lay members who formally adhere to SSPX convictions risk automatic excommunication.

Higgins estimates roughly 600,000 members worldwide and about 550 priests, calling the movement a “thorn in the flesh” rather than an existential threat to Church unity. He also notes smaller breakaway bodies, including a Canadian sedevacantist consecration planned in the Orkneys. Freedom Times covered UK and Irish SSPX chapels after the decree in the previous week’s roundup.