EXCLUSIVE: Father of grooming gang liar Ellie Williams insists she ‘didn’t make everything up’ but admits she DID invent rape claims – after police ignored her reporting abuse as a child
- Eleanor Williams, 22, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice
- For help, call the Samaritans on 116 123 or visit www.samaritans.org
Ellie Williams’ father today accepted that his daughter had invented a catalogue of sexual abuse and ‘fabricated evidence’ about innocent men falsely accused of being in a grooming gang – but only because police refused to believe her as a child.
Williams, 22, was jailed for eight-and-a-half years this week for spinning a web of lies that ruined the lives of her victims, driving some to attempt suicide, while she also heaped shame on her home town of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.
But the fantasist’s father Peter Williams an IT project manager, believes she was the victim of abuse as a child and she only lied later because she wasn’t believed by detectives earlier in life.
Mr Williams, 54, has not revealed when his daughter first reported the genuine allegations to police, who was accused of abusing his child or whether these claims were investigated – but he told MailOnline today, after Ellie was jailed: ‘I’m really missing my beautiful daughter’.
‘It’s been so hard to understand what’s happened. I truly believe that Ellie didn’t make everything up. The police wouldn’t believe her so she started fabricating evidence, that was her downfall’, he said.
Ellie Williams’ father Peter (pictured) admits his daughter is guilty but says she was not believed as a child by police
Eleanor Williams, 22, (left, in a police mugshot and right, with her self-inflicted injuries) was found guilty of perverting the course of justice and has been jailed for eight and a half years. She will serve just over four years
Williams in Tesco buying a hammer that she would later use to attack her own face
‘I’m also concerned that the judge gave commendation to the Cumbria Constabulary for such a thorough investigation which makes me believe they were covering their misgivings very carefully.
‘That’s just my view, but I’m really missing my beautiful daughter.’
Eleanor Williams’ litany of lies
The first claim
The first false allegation was made by Williams when she was 16.
Preston Crown Court heard she had been with others at Cameron Bibby’s house in November 2017 when she was sick after drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis.
Mr Bibby and his friends contacted Williams’s sister and mother, who came to collect her and later took her to hospital, where she alleged she had been raped.
Williams withdrew support from a prosecution in January 2018, after Mr Bibby had been arrested.
– Injuries
In March 2019 Williams had been on a night out with Jordan Trengove when she was taken home after becoming intoxicated.
She would later allege Mr Trengove raped her that night, and then on two later occasions, claiming he came to her flat, attacked her and threatened her with a knife.
Judge Robert Altham said: ‘She caused [the injuries] to herself to support her allegations. As we will see this was to become a feature of her conduct.’
– Trafficking
Williams claimed she had been groomed since the age of 12 or 13 by local business owner Mohammed Ramzan, who she falsely claimed took her across the region and persuaded her to have sex with other men.
She described punishment beatings, rape, a girl nearly dying as a result of a beating and another having a dog set on her.
– Amsterdam
Williams told police she had been taken to Amsterdam by Mr Ramzan, forced to work in a brothel and sold at an auction for 25,000 euros, but the buyer did not go through with the deal.
During the trial, Jonathan Sandiford KC compared the account to a scene from the Liam Neeson film Taken, in which an ex-Secret Service agent’s teenage daughter is abducted by human traffickers.
At the time Williams was in the Netherlands Mr Ramzan’s bank card was being used at a B&Q in Barrow, police discovered.
– Ibiza
Williams said she was taken to Ibiza by Mr Ramzan and made to have sex with men. She admitted this was not true when officers suggested they check flight documents, but at trial she maintained the allegation.
-Blackpool
When police investigated Williams’s account of being taken to addresses in Blackpool and forced to have sex with men, they found she had gone to the seaside resort alone and, after buying a Pot Noodle from a nearby shop, spent most of her time in her hotel room watching YouTube.
-Preston
After a chance encounter with Oliver Gardner in Preston city centre, Williams initially claimed he was a trafficker who forced her to take cocaine, sold her to two Asian men and raped her.
Judge Altham said: ‘This was a complete fabrication, much of it would be disproved from CCTV.’
– The hammer
In what the prosecution called her ‘finale event’, in May 2020 Williams was found by police with injuries including a swollen eye, cut finger and injuries to her legs and abdomen which were ‘too numerous to count’.
She would later post pictures of the injuries on Facebook with a description of being beaten, groomed and trafficked by Asian men.
But, evidence from a pathologist found the injuries were consistent with being caused to herself.
A hammer found at the scene had her DNA on and was identical to one she had purchased from Tesco earlier in the month.
Williams was found guilty in a of inventing stories about being abducted and abused by ‘Asian grooming gangs.’
Among her claims was that she was taken the Amsterdam and Ibiza to be passed around by men and raped.
In all she accused six innocent men of sexual offences against her, ranging from grooming to rape and human trafficking. Three of her victims attempted suicide and one, Jordan Trengove, spent 10 weeks in jail.
To reinforce her claims, Williams caused herself horrific injuries with a hammer that she was captured on CCTV buying from a local store.
She cut herself to her fingers and abdomen and then posted photographs on Facebook alongside a series of lurid claims.
The judge said he could find no explanation for why she had made up the abuse claims, which he described as ‘complete fiction’.
Since she was found guilty, Williams has alluded to childhood trauma who may have led to her acting in the way she did.
In his sentencing remarks at Preston Crown Court, Judge Robert Altham said: ‘Since she has been found guilty the defendant has hinted at other sources of trauma but given no real indication as to what it could be.
‘Of course, I have considered whether the aberrant nature of these offences means that I should assume that the defendant is suffering from some mental impairment.
‘There is no explanation for why the Defendant would commit these offences. She has gone to extraordinary lengths to create false accusations including causing herself significant injury.
‘No explanation for this behaviour is apparent. However, that does not mean that I should speculate. Unless and until the Defendant chooses to say why she has told these lies we will not know.’
Her father’s belief that she was a genuine victim is shared by other members of Williams’ family.
Her sister Lucy Williams, 25, refuses to accept she caused herself the injuries, having seen them at first hand.
She told Sky News: ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
She went on to say she had seen Williams being manhandled in the bars of Barrow by men.
Lucy said: ”One of the men was harassing Ellie at the bar, some of our friends had seen it and warned him off.
”He grabbed her outside of the takeaway and started pulling her arm and said ‘come on, we’re going’. Yep [I did see that].
‘She was like ‘no I’m going with my sister’, you could see his face he was so angry with her. And she did come home with me, then the next weekend she came back black and blue, worse than we’ve ever seen.’
In an earlier interview with Mailonline, her mother Allison Johnston, 51, a Labour councillor, said: ‘There were some things she claimed that I do believe were not true,
there were parts of it that she made up.
‘But I do believe that substantially she was telling the truth and she was the victim of abuse and trafficking.
‘I also don’t believe that Ellie inflicted those injuries on herself, she couldn’t have caused them. Her throat was cut, her finger and ear were cut, she had ‘rat’ carved on her stomach.
‘There is so much people still don’t know about Ellie and what she has been through, they would think differently if they knew.’
Williams’ supporters raised more than £20,000 through a social media campaign after her post was shared by celebrities including Countdown presenter Rachel Riley.
But police had become suspicious of her story after discovering she had set up fake Snapchat accounts and sent messages to herself.
Jailing her, the Honorary Recorder of Preston Judge Robert Altham told Williams her lies risked deterring ‘genuine victims’ from going to police fearing they would ‘not be believed’.
During the first Covid lockdown in May 2020, Williams was found by officers with injuries which she claimed were inflicted by the gang.
The following day the then-teenager shared images of her wounds in a Facebook post, saying she wanted to ‘raise awareness’ of the alleged grooming ring who were ‘mostly Pakistani men’.
Williams falsely claimed restaurateur Mohammed Ramzan had trafficked her since the age of 12 and threatened to kill her. Mr Ramzan denied ever having any contact with Williams
Jordan Trengove (pictured outside court), 22, was driven to attempt suicide as his life was ‘utterly destroyed’ by baseless accusations of rape against him from Williams
The post was shared more than 100,000 times and prompted TommyRobinson – founder of the far-Right English Defence League – to come to Barrow to ‘investigate’.
When police instead charged Williams, outraged supporters took part in demonstrations and Asian-owned businesses were attacked. But her trial heard the Snapchat account which Williams claimed was that of an Asian trafficker actually belonged to a Tesco worker from Essex who had never met her.
She claimed restaurateur Mohammed Ramzan had groomed her for sex from the age of 12, even selling her at auction for 25,000 euros after making her work at a brothel in Amsterdam.
Williams also alleged he had threatened to throw her in the sea during a ‘horrific’ trip to Blackpool during which she was ‘pimped out’ to eight men.
However, it emerged that during the alleged Amsterdam trip, Mr Ramzan had in fact been shopping at his local B&Q.
Meanwhile, on the night of her alleged ordeal in the seaside town she instead stayed alone in a hotel after buying a Pot Noodle and spent the evening watching YouTube on her phone.
Williams was found guilty of eight counts of perverting the course of justice.
She pleaded guilty to a ninth count at an earlier hearing.
In the letter to the judge read in court yesterday, Williams said she would never have written her post had she known ‘what consequences would have come’.
In a statement to her sentencing hearing at Preston Crown Court, Mr Ramzan said he had received ‘countless death threats’ because of her lies. He said he had tried to kill himself following his arrest.
Afterwards Jordan Trengove, who was locked up after being falsely accused of rape by Williams, said he planned to take legal action against the police.
‘I don’t think the sentence is long enough, in my opinion, for what she’s done to us all,’ he added.
Williams had falsely accused multiple people of abusing her, with a jury finding her guilty of eight counts of perverting the course of justice
Williams was 19 years old when she claimed on Facebook she had been raped and abused by a grooming gang in the coastal town of Barrow
Williams posted pictures on Facebook claiming to show injuries sustained at the hands of a gang who had groomed, trafficked and beaten her
Mr Trengove said he also tried to end his life as a result of her lies, as did Oliver Gardner, who was accused of raping Williams after a chance encounter on a night out.
Superintendent Matthew Pearman, of Cumbria Police, stressed that Williams’s allegations ‘could not have been taken any more seriously when she initially came forward’.
He said it had been a ‘dark period for Barrow’ but urged anyone who had been a victim of sexual abuse to report it to police.
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