A woman who published a lurid account on Facebook of becoming the victim of an Asian grooming gang in the northwest of England has been convicted of perverting the course of justice.
Eleanor Williams, 22, posted pictures of her so-called injuries and gave an account of having being groomed, trafficked, and beaten. The post, in May 2020, was shared more than 100,000 times and a Facebook group, Justice for Ellie, was even set up in its wake.
But Williams’s account proved to be a complete fabrication.
One of the men she accused was living thousands of miles away in Seattle at the time, and a woman she claimed was another victim was also in the United States.
On Tuesday she was found guilty at Preston Crown Court on eight counts of doing acts tending and intended to pervert the course of justice.
She had already pleaded guilty to a ninth count of perverting the course of justice, which related to a hammer which she asked her mother and sister to take to a solicitor in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.
Williams’s Facebook post—which perhaps had greater traction as it came in the midst of the first COVID-19 lockdown when many people were at home and gorging themselves on social media—led to a crowdfund appeal which raised £22,000 “to help her and bring her abusers to justice.”
In his closing speech to the jury, Jonathan Sandiford, KC, prosecuting, said, “The defendant goes online to her social media contacts and effectively finds random names on the internet she presents as being victims of trafficking or perpetrators.”
The Honorary Recorder of Preston, Judge Robert Altham, said she would be sentenced in March.
At the start of the trial, Altham told the jury her allegations had led to considerable racial tensions in Barrow, an isolated town which is most famous as being the home of the BAE Systems shipyard where Britain’s nuclear submarines are built, amid great secrecy.
Altham said: “That community impact was said to include some elements of tension within the community of Barrow. It included, as I can recall, at least one family moving out of the Barrow area and harm to various businesses.”
Reporter Who Faced Death Threats Says ‘Justice Has Prevailed’
After the verdict, Fenton told The Epoch Times: “This case highlighted the burden of responsibility of social media companies such as Facebook in acting as the publisher of comments which can prove to be defamatory, false and hugely damaging.“Mine was far from the only life affected by these false allegations and I’m just relieved that the truth has finally come out and justice has prevailed,” she added.
Among those Williams falsely accused were a local businessman, Mohammed Ramzan, who she claimed was the ringleader of the grooming gang.
Williams claimed he took her to the Netherlands to sell her to a brothel and Sandiford said the allegation was similar to the scene in the Liam Neeson film “Taken.”
Ramzan, who could prove he was at a B&Q store in Barrow at the time he was supposedly in Amsterdam, received 500 death threats in the wake of her post.
Under cross-examination, Ramzan asked Louise Blackwell, KC, defending, “Don’t you think you have put my life through enough hell, or your client has?”
Another man she falsely accused, Jordan Trengove, told the court, “It can ruin your life and it has ruined mine.”
Williams was found by police on May 19, 2020 near her home on Walney Island with injuries which she claimed were inflicted by the gang after a violent rape. She then went on to accuse a number of men of rapes, dating back to 2017.
But detectives investigating her claims became suspicious and, at her trial, Sandiford said Williams caused the injuries to herself with the hammer, which was found in her bedroom.
Williams had sent messages to herself, purporting to be from her abusers, and manipulated messages from real people to make it look as if they had abused her and were taunting her.
Some of the people she accused were complete figments of her imagination, while others randomly got caught up in her allegations.
The trial heard that a man from Essex who responded to messages from her on Snapchat mistakenly thought she was someone he knew in Portsmouth. His replies to her were manipulated to sound sinister.
When she gave evidence at her trial Williams she had told a “pack of lies,” but said of the Facebook post, “I wanted people to know what was going on in Barrow, still is going on.”
Williams’s case has echoes of the Dolphin Square hoaxer, Carl Beech, whose false claims about a VIP ring of paedophiles led to the Metropolitan Police launching Operation Midland, a costly and ultimately futile investigation which found nothing but besmirched the names of several famous politicians.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Meta, which owns Facebook, but has not received a response.
