Diana Napolis

Diana Louisa Napolis (born 1955), also known by her online pseudonym Karen Curio Jones or more often simply Curio, is an American former social worker. Between the late 1990s and 2000, Napolis posted a series of pseudonymous accusations alleging that individuals skeptical of the satanic ritual abuse moral panic were involved in a conspiracy to cover up the sexual abuse and murder of children. The pseudonymous poster's real life identity was confirmed as Napolis in 2000. In 2001, she was charged with stalking film director Steven Spielberg, and in 2002 faced more charges for making death threats against actress Jennifer Love Hewitt, and was committed to a state hospital until fit to stand trial. After a year in prison Napolis pleaded guilty to stalking and was released on probation. Napolis originally worked as a child protection worker for nearly 10 years (leaving the position in 1996), becoming involved in the satanic ritual abuse (SRA) moral panic that arose in the early 1980s. By the late 1990s the phenomenon was rejected by mainstream scholars and law enforcement experts, but Napolis continued to believe in the existence of SRA. Napolis held that those who had discredited the phenomenon were themselves child abusers involved in a conspiracy to conceal their activities from the public. Posting under the screen name "Curio", Napolis began a pattern of online harassment against those she believed were involved in the conspiracy, posting information about the individuals. Among those she targeted were Carol Hopkins, a school administrator who was part of a grand jury in San Diego, California that criticized social workers for removing children from their home without reason; Michael Aquino, a member of the Temple of Set and a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve against whom accusations of SRA were made but dropped as the accusations proved to be impossible; and Elizabeth Loftus, a professor who studied memory who believed coercive questioning techniques by poorly trained investigators led to young children making false allegations of child sexual abuse.