Introducing: Unreliable Witness

Unreliable Witness | Storycast

Sky News

True Crime, News, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.3 • 728 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

At the height of lockdown, 19-year-old Ellie Williams claims on social media she’s been trafficked by an Asian grooming gang across the North of England. Photos of her horrific injuries add to the outrage and the post goes viral – shared more than 100 thousand times.
Social media rumours lead to attacks on Asian men and businesses in her hometown of Barrow-in-Furness. But when she’s arrested for perverting the course of justice, things really explode and there are protest rallies and claims of a cover-up. At the trial the prosecution claims she’d lied, faked text messages and even caused the catalogue of injuries to herself.

In season 6 of StoryCast, Sky News’ Jason Farrell and Liz Lane, who reported on the case at the time, return to Barrow to investigate what could have led her to make these claims and if, underneath it all, there is some other secret buried amongst the lies.
With access to her family, police investigators and those most impacted by her allegations, we ask: Why did Ellie Williams create such an elaborate lie? And what happened AFTER the trial – once all the media attention died down and other allegations began to emerge?

Transcript

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0:00.0	She's just turned 22, but looks younger, small, pale-faced, no makeup.
0:11.0	The men and women of the jury follow her words intently.
0:14.7	Anyone walking into court at that moment would assume she's the victim.
0:19.4	She speaks slowly and quietly. Elena Williams tells the court that she's the victim. She speaks slowly and quietly.
0:22.4	Elena Williams tells the court that she's been sexually abused and beaten countless times
0:27.8	at the hands of a grooming gang. She wrote a long Facebook post before the case had got to court.
0:35.1	It had gone viral, quickly shared a hundred thousand times.
0:40.3	Yesterday, I was put into the back of a car, taken to an address to have sex with free Asian men.
0:46.3	Afterward, the organisers of the party decided to beat me to teach me a lesson.
0:51.3	She put up pictures of her injuries. Her eye swollen shut. Her finger
0:58.4	bloodied and partially severed. And her body, a constellation of cuts and bruises, and carved into
1:08.3	her skin the word rat.
1:11.8	These are evil yet clever men.
1:14.2	They know how to manipulate, convince and threaten girls into staying.
1:18.5	And when they can't, they use extreme violence.
1:21.4	But Eleanor Williams isn't the victim.
1:25.8	She's the one on trial.
1:34.3	Her story? A carefully orchestrated series of lies and carefully fabricated evidence designed to frame innocent men.
1:38.8	We had threats of people who were going to burn the shops down, burn us down. And even the
1:42.9	mosaic of horror inflicted on her body.
1:47.4	She'd done it to herself.
1:50.7	I'm Sky News, home editor, Jason Farrell.
	...

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