Woman's Lies Lead to Death Threats Against an Asian Family
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When news of 23-year-old Eleanor Williams' abuse surfaced, it triggered protests, attended by some on the far right, in the town of Barrow-In-Furness and in other towns across the north of England.
But detectives soon found that she'd created fake social media accounts to make it look like she was being intimidated and that the multiple times she'd turned up at work or home with bruises and black eyes, she'd done this to herself.
Even the knife marks on her breasts, and that someone had carved the word "RAT" into her stomach after she spoke to the police - that someone was herself.
In short, all the gloomy details she described to the press and the police, as well as in court, were all in her head.
But the lies had stirred up hatred against a group of men whose lives were turned upside down in a matter of days, and also wasted weeks of police time.
Among the men she accused, Asian men were mostly affected. One of them, a local restaurant owner called Mohammed Ramzan, said he received more than 500 death threats.
Ramzan denied knowing Williams apart from a single passing encounter at a family party. But he told reporters that his whole family were threatened as a result of her allegations.
"We had messages like people are going to rape my wife in front of me. From Islamophobia to racism, to just general hate - people wishing me dead," he said.
"My children had fire extinguishers, and baseball bats next to their beds for their safety because we had threats. People were going to burn the shops down, burn us down.
"They've all dealt with me. I've fed them all because I've been in the food industry. I've fed them all, from the children to the adults to the grandparents... and they turned on me."
In her late teens, Williams became withdrawn and in early 2019, aged 18, she suddenly left home, moving to a block of flats in Barrow-in-Furness. Over seven months, her mother, Allison Johnston, said she reported her daughter missing 32 times.
Johnston told reporters: "She was going missing for days on end. I was driving around where she lived and I noticed that a light was on in her flat so I went and knocked on the door and she opened the door and her face was, she had two black eyes, it was so swollen I hardly recognised her and she had a cut across her neck. She was just black and blue all over."
Over the course of several months, her daughter would often appear with injuries.
She said: "She's still got a scar on her throat. Her ear's been cut, her finger's been cut. She's got 'rat' carved across her stomach. She's got marks around her ankles."
Staff at the pub where Williams worked also noticed the injuries.
Brian Smith, the manager, said: "Her basic excuse at the time was that she just kept bumping into things, and she was very clumsy, which didn't ring true to me with the type of injuries that she had."
He thought she was being bullied: "One day she came in with a particularly bad set of black eyes... So she was by the lockers out the back after we finished shift one day and she was a bit upset. And I said to her 'look, just tell me what's going on. I'll be able to help you, they're only kids.'
"She didn't say anything for about two minutes. And then she said that it wouldn't stop and they weren't children. They were grown men. And it wouldn't stop because they were using her to get profit."
After knowing about the abuse, police in Barrow began an investigation. They found evidence on her phone that suggested Williams was being sexually exploited and trafficked by a group of men.
But months later Cumbria Police would change their tack and arrest Williams for lying - fabricating the evidence that she was a victim.
Then one evening in May 2020, while on bail, Williams went missing again. She was found by police bloodied in a field near her family home.
At this point, she made the decision to go public with her allegations and posted them on Facebook, including pictures of her injuries.
She was rearrested within minutes of putting it up, but the reaction to the post was explosive and triggered protests in the north of England.
Williams went to great lengths to convince people she was a victim, including buying a hammer from Tesco and causing injuries to herself.
But she said in court: "I didn't buy a hammer to hurt myself - I'm not a psychopath."
A Home Office pathologist though, said the wounds on one occasion showed signs of being self-inflicted. The defence would later argue that this pathologist report only referred to one set of injuries when there had been many others.
Williams' mother still does not believe her daughter inflicted the injuries upon herself.
"Who would cut their own throat?" she said.
"I work with people that self-harm. I work with people with mental health issues. The thing that really always gets me is, if you were harming yourself to that degree, you would have some kind of significant mental health issues. And Ellie was not displaying any of those. She was getting up and going to work."
Williams' sentencing has been adjourned until 13 and 14 March this year.
Source: SkyNews
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