A 22-year-old woman, whose lies caused a storm of anger and protests after she falsely claimed she was the victim of an Asian grooming gang, has been jailed for eight and a half years.
Eleanor Williams was today sentenced for perverting the course of justice.
She fabricated evidence to make it look like she was a victim of multiple men.
WARNING: This article contains images people may find distressing
The senior investigating officer, Doug Marshall, told Sky News: “I’ve had cases where people have told lies, but never to this extent.”
He added that if Williams hadn’t been charged “it just wouldn’t have stopped”.
Sentencing Williams, Honorary Recorder of Preston Judge Robert Altham, said: “It is troubling to say the least that she shows no significant signs of remorse.”
He said there was no explanation for why the defendant made the allegations, which he described as “complete fiction”.
“Unless and until the defendant chooses to say why she has told these lies we will not know,” he added.
At the sentencing hearing in Preston Crown Court on Monday, three men Williams had falsely accused of attacking her said they had tried to take their own lives because of her accusations.
Mohammed Ramzan, who was accused by Williams of rape and trafficking, said he had tried to kill himself two weeks after being arrested. He said: “I still bear the scars to this day.”
Speaking outside the court after Williams was jailed, Mr Ramzan said, “I am not sure how my family and I are going to recover from this”, but added they were “determined to move forward positively” with their lives.
In a statement read to the court, another of Williams’ victims, Jordan Trengove, said the word “rapist” had been sprayed on his house and that he’d tried to end his life in August 2020.
“I’ve not been able to leave the house, I’ve not been able to go to work,” he told Sky News after the sentencing.
“Though it’s a relief that she’s locked away, Mr Trengove added he wished the prison term “was a bit longer”.
Another man, Oliver Gardner, gave a statement saying he was sectioned after trying to end his life because of the claims.
Even though four of the men she’d accused were white, Asian business owners were impacted after Williams posted pictures of injuries to her face and body on Facebook in May 2020.
Two owners of local Indian restaurants who didn’t want to be named told Sky News they had bricks thrown through their windows and were spat at in the street. One said he lost 90% of his customers in the immediate aftermath of the claims.
Police say more than 150 crimes were committed, by others, as a result of Williams’ false claims.
They say they initially began investigating the sexual abuse allegations, but the case took a turn when they realised Williams had booked herself into a hotel at a time when she claimed she was being sold for sex in several properties in Blackpool.
CCTV showed her checking in. Phone records suggested she stayed in her room watching videos, apart from a brief trip to a nearby store to buy a pot noodle and chocolate.
Further investigations showed Williams had set up fake social media accounts to message herself, to make it appear that she was receiving messages from abusers.
Claims that Mr Ramzan tried to auction her in Amsterdam and traffic her to Ibiza were also demonstrably untrue.
But, speaking exclusively to Sky News, her sister Lucy said Williams’ phone messages “were constant… asking her to go out, to wear certain types of clothing, to make sure she looks good for tonight. It was all very weird”. She said she also watched the messages come through and even filmed threatening snapchats such as an image of a gun and machetes.
Lucy Williams accepts several of her sister’s claims were untrue, such as her being auctioned in Amsterdam, as she’d been with her on that trip. Nor does Lucy believe that her sister went to sex parties from the age of 12, as they shared a room together, and she would have noticed.
However, she is convinced there were men, not included on the charge sheet, who did intimidate and harm Williams.
Describing one evening, she said: “One of the men was harassing Ellie at the bar and some of our friends had seen it and they’d warned him off. And there was a takeaway around the corner from the nightclub, and Ellie was coming home that night with me.
“He grabbed her outside of the takeaway, and started pulling her arm saying, ‘come on we’re going’. And she was like, ‘no I’m going with my sister’, and his face, he was so angry with her. She did come home with me, and then the next weekend she came back black and blue, worse than we’ve ever seen.”
Lucy says her sister begged her not to go to the police, even when she repeatedly came home with bruises, culminating in injuries Lucy photographed in May 2020 that Eleanor posted on Facebook, claiming she was being abused.
It was the prosecution’s case that Williams inflicted these injuries upon herself in an effort to support her lies. CCTV of her buying a hammer in Tesco was shown in court, similar to one found in the field where Williams was discovered with her wounds.
A pathologist gave evidence that bruising to her face, arms, back and legs, were consistent with being self-inflicted by a hammer of the same type.
In January, a jury found Williams guilty on all nine counts of perverting the course of justice.
In a statement read out by the defence, Williams said: “I know I’ve made some mistakes and I am sorry. I was young and confused. I’m not saying I am guilty, but I know I have done some wrong and so I’m sorry.”
She added she was “devastated” by the impact her Facebook post had on the community of Barrow.
Her mother, Allison, also spoke to Sky News, and tearfully talked about the moment the verdict came in. She said: “I can’t describe it. I still can’t take it in really. It just doesn’t feel real. The person the press are portraying is not the person I know.”
She accepts her daughter told lies but said: “I believe she was just trying to get people to listen to her.”
However, the men who faced false allegations, and people in Barrow who feel they were deceived, will all welcome the fact that Williams is behind bars.