The week of 1–7 June carried cult and high-control-group stories across Europe and the UK: Sweden’s first Maniac Murder Cult terror prosecution; a Paris court backs a former Raëlian adherent’s testimony against the movement; HBO premieres a documentary on a male supermodel’s exit from an alleged Manhattan modelling cult; Switzerland’s infoSekta reports record cult-counselling demand; the disputed AllatRa movement draws protest after a European Parliament seminar in Brussels; and UK campaigners challenge Andrew Tate’s extradition delay after a Moscow appearance. Summaries draw on monitored European and UK outlets; full source links follow.

Hoyt Richards and Bring Me the Beauties

In the late 1980s Hoyt Richards was, by The Hollywood Reporter’s account, the most successful male model in the world, regularly photographed by fashion photographer Bruce Weber and working beside Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. What the runway did not show were nightly calls from hotel rooms across Europe and America to Frederick von Mierers, a Manhattan leader who claimed to be an alien “walk-in” from Arcturus.

HBO’s Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult, directed by Chris Smith, premiered on HBO Max on 2 June; Teesside Live reports further episodes on Tuesdays. Richards, 64, is the central survivor voice. He met von Mierers (born Frederick Myers), aged sixteen on a Nantucket beach in 1981 and was soon walked into Ford Models. By day he worked for Versace, Lauren, and Karan; by night he slept on mats in von Mierers’ apartment, surrendered earnings, and filed reports on his thoughts and behaviour. He left Eternal Values in 1999 after the group’s predicted apocalypse failed, having first spoken publicly in 2018.

After von Mierers died in March 1990, the same month Marie Brenner profiled the group in Vanity Fair and prosecutors investigated nearly $2 million in fraudulent gemstone sales, survivors relocated to North Carolina. When Richards challenged the revised timeline, a successor told him he should kill himself, The Hollywood Reporter reports. On 3 July 1999 he called fellow Ford model Fabio, who flew him to Los Angeles and housed him for eighteen months. Whistleblower Jacki Adams, who fled and featured in Vanity Fair, saw her career damaged while Richards’s bookings rose.

Richards now works as a cult exit counsellor and is engaged to Donna Flagg, whom the group pressured him to abandon, The Hollywood Reporter reports. On manipulation he says: “the pilot light never goes out… It gets turned down so low, you can’t see it. But it never goes out.”

Maniac Murder Cult: first Swedish terror charges

Swedish prosecutors have charged a twenty-year-old man from the Stockholm area with participation in a terrorist organisation tied to Maniac Murder Cult (MKY), the first such prosecution in Sweden, Dagens Nyheter, Aftonbladet, and ABC Nyheter report. The case is before Attunda district court north of Stockholm.

Prosecutor Lars Hedvall told Dagens Nyheter the accused moved in Sweden’s white-power milieu, contacted MKY, and between November 2025 and his arrest in February 2026 built a Swedish cell, running an internet platform and trying to recruit members. Investigators secured target lists and evidence he acquired knives; Hedvall did not charge attempted terrorist crimes, and no one else is charged.

Hedvall described MKY to Aftonbladet as neo-Nazi with strong satanist elements, classified as a terror organisation in Canada and the UK, and linked to a murder of a 74-year-old woman in Romania and a school shooting in Tennessee. He said the group seeks societal collapse toward a “new Fourth Reich.” ABC Nyheter cites the US Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center tracing MKY’s origins to Ukraine, its spread to Russia, and an online presence from around 2018.

Andrew Tate: Moscow platform, UK extradition delay

Women in the UK pursuing a civil case against Andrew Tate, alleging rape, assault, and coercive control, have challenged UK authorities’ decision to delay extradition after Tate appeared in Moscow greeted by folk performers, The Guardian reports. Tate and his brother face UK criminal charges including rape, actual bodily harm, and human trafficking, a civil claim by four women through solicitor Matthew Jury, and Romanian charges for human trafficking, rape, and forming an organised criminal group following their arrest in December 2022.

A UK extradition warrant is in force, but the Crown Prosecution Service has agreed the brothers will not be returned until Romanian proceedings end, which solicitor Matthew Jury disputes. He called the Moscow visit an “extraordinary spectacle” and said the UK had failed women seeking justice; one claimant told The Guardian that UK commitments on violence against women risk looking like “hollow platitudes” unless Tate is brought to trial. Solicitor Andrew Ford, for the Tates, said Tate would voluntarily come to the UK to “clear his name” once Romania finishes.

The Independent reports Gareth Southgate refused to name Tate in his BBC documentary Gareth Southgate: Changing the Game for Young Men, telling The Times: “I don’t want to give him the publicity. He’s not worth it.” Southgate said influencers fill a void when young men lack fathers, youth clubs, or school mentors: a counterpoint in the week’s wider debate over the authority figures Tate represents online.

AllatRa at the European Parliament

In February the AllatRa Global Research Center held a European Parliament seminar in Brussels on nanoplastics, hosted on the invitation of Czech MEP Ondřej Knotek of the Patriots group, Kvartal and E&E News report. Slovak MEP Martin Hojsík and two Czech colleagues protested; Parliament administration concluded there were insufficient grounds to investigate.

The Ukraine-founded, US-based movement is accused by critics of pseudoscience, apocalyptic prophecy, disinformation, and pro-Russian messaging; Ukraine’s SBU classified it as a pseudo-religious, pro-Russian cult in 2023, Kvartal and E&E News report (Swedish and English outlets render the SBU label as sekt / sect). A spokesperson told Politico the group condemns Russia’s invasion and pointed to its ban in Russia as evidence against Kremlin ties, a dispute that places Parliament’s hospitality rules under renewed scrutiny.

Afghan women, EU diplomacy, and Fawzia Koofi

Writing in The Guardian, Fawzia Koofi, Afghanistan’s first female deputy speaker of parliament and president of the board of Women for Afghanistan, says the Taliban arrested three family members, tortured one, and confiscated her house “to silence me” as she prepared to appeal to European diplomats. She learned meanwhile that the EU is inviting Taliban officials to Brussels.

Koofi writes that little has improved in nearly five years: no official schools for girls beyond sixth grade; bans on women doctors as maternal mortality rises; women barred from jobs. New penal rules, she says, legalised slavery and child marriage. Under Article 32, a husband who beats his wife so that she suffers fractures, wounds, or bruises can be sentenced to fifteen days in prison if she proves her claim before a judge; under Article 70, harming a bird or animal can bring five months in prison; her headline’s claim that a bird is better protected than an Afghan woman.

She urges EU states to codify gender apartheid and end impunity, not “invite the perpetrators to Brussels.” Welcoming Taliban officials on European soil, she writes, is “a devastating betrayal” of Afghan women who have “fought, suffered and resisted Taliban oppression.”

Sweden: 15-year-old charged, links to Com network

A fifteen-year-old in Ängelholm is charged at Helsingborg district court with arson, criminal damage, and child-pornography offences after vehicle fires between autumn 2025 and early 2026, Expressen reports. In November alone seventeen vehicles were destroyed, thirty-four damaged, and two garage buildings burned.

Expressen links the case to “The Com”, violent online networks including 764, a cult mixing nazism, sadism, and satanism that extorts children and young people. In interrogation the boy admitted joining what he called “sekten 764” a year or two ago, and said the group forced him to film the arson:

– Jag begick inte brottet för att det var kul eller någonting. Jag begick det för att jag blev tvingad. Om jag inte gör det, då skulle de ringa polisen och berätta. Alltså, jag är med i en sekt, fortsätter han i förhör.

He has been detained since February; trial opens 9 June.

France: Raëlian cult: Lydia Hadjara cleared in defamation case

Lydia Hadjara, a former adherent of the Raëlian movement, the cult Claude Vorilhon (Raël) founded in the 1970s, which Le Figaro labels secte, was cleared of defamation at the tribunal judiciaire de Paris. Vorilhon, now in Japan, sued after her January 2025 book denouncing sexual violence she says she suffered in the movement between 1986 and 2007; she had separately filed a criminal complaint in Lyon against him and two members.

The tribunal ruled she had proved good faith in denouncing the abuse she alleges in her book, Le Figaro reports, citing her lawyer Me Aline Lebret. Outside court Hadjara wept and said it was a relief to be told her account was true, but that the suit had been an ordeal that cost her sleep and money. Mouv’Enfants, a French association that supports victims of childhood sexual violence, called the defamation suit a procédure-baillon, a gag procedure to discourage survivors from speaking, Le Figaro reports.

Switzerland: record demand for cult counselling

infoSekta is Switzerland’s Zurich-based cult counselling centre (Beratungsstelle), which provides advice and information to people caught up in high-control or controversial religious and spiritual groups. In its 2025 annual report, discussed on watson.ch by cult specialist Hugo Stamm, managing director Susanne Schaaf writes that directly affected people suffer under “cult-like dynamics” (sektenhafte Dynamiken) while relatives often see “their world collapse” when a family member joins such a community, and that rising follow-up contacts show the need for sustained support beyond a single call.

The centre recorded 3,795 counselling contacts in 2025, a record (952 first contacts, 2,843 follow-ups). Enquiries touched more than 300 groups and guru-like individuals; watson.ch notes schools, courts, hospitals, and church bodies also bring cases, though seventy-one per cent of contacts came from private individuals. Jehovah’s Witnesses drew the most group-specific cases, with seventy-four per cent of those from former members. Stamm argues media rarely cover cults as they did in the 1990s; groups such as Scientology, he writes, have not disappeared but have faded from public view.

France: Cognac conference on evangelical growth

Historian Sébastien Fath (CNRS) spoke at the Protestant church in Cognac on 6 June on evangelical Christianity in France, Charente Libre reports. Evangelicals are about 1.6 per cent of the population versus 0.2 per cent thirty years ago. Fath is quoted on how they were long perceived:

« Pendant longtemps, on les associait à des sectes, surtout en France. »

Charente Libre reports evangelical minorities among Protestants drew “suspicion” in a Catholic country. He contrasts US evangelical access to the Oval Office with France, where he says “there is no conquest of power”; growth is stronger from African evangelical churches.

Nottinghamshire: Active Club stickers removed

Hundreds of stickers linked to Active Club England (described by the Anti-Defamation League as a “nationwide network of localised white supremacist crews”) appeared in West Bridgford, the Nottingham Post reports. Rushcliffe MP James Naish asked the council to remove them. Telegram posts seen by the paper list membership criteria including a “pro-white worldview” and combat training.

The council’s Streetwise team removed the stickers and shared locations with police. Naish said attempts to “spread division like this should have no place here.”

Netherlands: Danny Grootveld on the Maasbach church

Danny Grootveld, a relative of leaders of the Maasbach Pentecostal community in The Hague, has published Tunnelvisie: kind van de Maasbach-sekte (Tunnel Vision: Child of the Maasbach Cult). In an interview with Den Haag FM he calls the community “a mental prison” governed by leader David Maasbach, whose authority ran through family, employment, housing, and spiritual life. David Maasbach told him, he recalls: “Danny must die, so you can walk God’s path.” After his wife left and he was excommunicated, Grootveld spent fifteen years writing and speaking about psychological violence inside the church.

Netherlands: chat helpline struggles to reach young cult victims

Fier is a Dutch foundation that runs support services for people affected by coercion and abuse. Its chat helpline Hulp Onder Controle, launched in 2025 after the Netherlands closed its central cult reporting point in 2020, offers round-the-clock online help to people in closed or coercive groups, oost.nl reports. Fier describes those groups as subject to “coercive control” (dwingende groepen) rather than using the word sect; it cites control, manipulation, and harm including sexual and financial abuse.

In the first three months there were 193 conversations with 118 unique users. After nine months, most people using the chat are in their thirties or older, not the teenagers and young adults the format was meant to reach, though oost.nl notes many enter high-control groups young, including people born inside them or brought in by parents.

Fier spokesperson Maarten Jan Buurman said that age pattern “surprises us,” given young people use other Fier online services. A digital campaign launched 2 June to point younger victims and young adults to the chat.

Beyond Europe

European outlets also carried two stories from beyond the UK and EU this week: a traditionalist Catholic ordination dispute in Kansas and a Church-led trafficking summit in Nigeria.

St Mary’s, Kansas: SSPX ordination threat

The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a traditionalist Catholic fraternity that rejects the Second Vatican Council, plans to ordain four bishops on 1 July without papal mandate, The Mercury reports. St Mary’s, Kansas, site of SSPX’s Immaculata church, faces possible excommunication; the Vatican warned in May that unauthorised consecrations would be a schismatic act. SSPX defied Rome similarly in 1988; Pope Benedict XVI lifted resulting excommunications in 2009, but the fraternity still lacks canonical status. Superior general Father Davide Pagliarani told Pope Leo XIV the society “would rather die than renounce” its principles.

Abuja: Church leaders on trafficking in Africa

Delegates at the Pathways to Freedom Africa Network summit in Abuja, Nigeria, on the theme “Inclusive Strategies for Ending Human Trafficking: Reaching the Most Marginalised”, called for coordinated action against trafficking, Vatican News reports. The summit was organised by the Justice Development and Peace Commission of the Abuja archdiocese with GrowEdo Support Group UK; participants included bishops from Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Benin, Kenya, and England and Wales.

Bishop Joseph Mary Kizito described trafficking as “a wound to humanity” and said disrupting syndicates requires police, border agencies, civil society, and business, not Church action alone. Delegates discussed inclusion of people with disabilities and economic programmes modelled on GrowEdo’s work with survivors in Edo State.

Source citations

HBO (YouTube): "Bring Me The Beauties | Official Trailer | HBO" , 2 Jun 2026 [02:13].

The Hollywood Reporter (US): "The Untold Saga Behind an Infamous Male Supermodel Cult" , 4 Jun 2026.

Teesside Live / Gazette Live (UK): "Bring Me the Beauties: Hoyt Richards and the Eternal Values cult" , 2 Jun 2026.

Screen Anarchy: "BRING ME THE BEAUTIES: A MODEL CULT Review: Deceptive Powers" , 1 Jun 2026.

AOL (US): "Where is Hoyt Richards now? All about the model and cult survivor from HBO's “Bring Me the Beauties”" , 2 Jun 2026.

Dagens Nyheter (Sweden): "Person åtalas för deltagande i terrororganisation" , 2 Jun 2026.

Aftonbladet (Sweden): "Åtalas för deltagande i terrorsekt" , 2 Jun 2026.

Aftenposten (Norway): "Svenske tiltalt for deltakelse i terrororganisasjon" , 2 Jun 2026.

ABC Nyheter (Norway): "Svenske tiltalt for deltakelse i satanistisk-nynazistiske Maniac Murder Cult" , 2 Jun 2026.

The Guardian (UK): "Women accusing Andrew Tate criticise UK extradition delay as influencer appears in Russia" , 6 Jun 2026.

The Independent (UK): "Gareth Southgate explains why he refuses to mention Andrew Tate in BBC manosphere documentary" , 7 Jun 2026.

Kvartal (Sweden): "Påstådd prorysk sekt höll möte i EU-parlamentet" , 6 Jun 2026.

E&E News (US): "EU Parliament hosted event by group accused of being pro-Russian sect that believes aliens walk among us" , 5 Jun 2026.

The Guardian (UK): "A bird has better protection than an Afghan woman. Welcoming the Taliban to Europe is a slap in the face" , 3 Jun 2026.

Expressen (Sweden): "15-årig pojke åtalad för mordbrand – kopplas till våldsnätverk" , 6 Jun 2026.

Le Figaro / AFP (France): "Violences sexuelles dans la secte Raël : Lydia Hadjara relaxée de la plainte pour diffamation" , 4 Jun 2026.

watson.ch (Switzerland): "300 Gruppen, tausende Hilferufe – warum die Schweiz ein Paradies für Sekten bleibt" , 6 Jun 2026.

Charente Libre (France): "« Pendant longtemps, on les associait à des sectes, surtout en France » : L'Église protestante de Cognac organise une conférence sur le mouvement évangélique, ce samedi" , 4 Jun 2026.

Nottingham Post (UK): "Hundreds of 'completely unacceptable' stickers removed from town" , 3 Jun 2026.

Den Haag FM (Netherlands): "Danny Grootveld doet boekje open over Maasbach-sekte: 'Het was gewoon doen wat David zegt'" , 2 Jun 2026.

Oost (Netherlands): "Sekte-hulpverleners uitgerekend voor online generatie onvindbaar" , 2 Jun 2026.

The Mercury (US): "Catholic sect including St. Marys church could face excommunication by ordaining bishops" , 3 Jun 2026.

Vatican News (Vatican City): "South Africa: Church leaders call for united action against human trafficking in Africa" , 3 Jun 2026.