Please, what’s the emergency? What’s your name? Ellie. What’s been happening that you want him out? He’s just snapped at me. Ellie, has he come back in? Just answer yes or no. Ellie, if you’re not able to speak, can you just press the number five twice? I wasn’t going to go out, but I got I put on Snapchat that finished work early, got a message of one of my mates.
The camera had sat on top of my hat. It pulled my dress down. So you’re under arrest in breach of court bail in relation to charges of perverting the course of justice. So you don’t have to say anything but army defense if you do not make sure to question something which will later in court. anything you do left.
On May 20th, 2020, we’re kicking off today’s episode right in the middle of the lockdown in the United Kingdom. It’s like everything’s already in full swing. You know, restrictions everywhere, that tense, stuck at home feeling. Um, the whole country basically paused. Barrow in Furnace is a place that owes its existence to the sea.
During this COVID crisis, Barrow has experienced COVID terribly, dreadfully. The worst hit town in the UK, according to the media, the highest number of cases in the port city of Barrow and Furnace in Cumbria was being described almost like a ghost town. The streets were empty and most people were stuck at home living their lives online.
You know, one of those people was Elena Williams, a 20-year-old woman. She was scrolling on Facebook. After typing out a long paragraph of text, she hit post and like almost instantly the post went viral. I think this is the hardest post I’ve ever had to write. That’s how it began. Yesterday, I was put into the backseat of a car and driven to [music] an address where I was supposed to have sex with three Asian men.
After that, I was beaten. Like to teach me a lesson, she continued, you know. Then Elena Williams went on to describe years of being held captive and how she was moved from country to country. She shared photos of her injuries so painful looking that honestly just seeing them made people flinch.
I can’t show those images here because of YouTube rules for me to show material like that. The platform has to recognize my content as educational or documentary. So please help me out. Leave comments asking YouTube to treat this channel as researchbased because like that would let these stories be even more powerful. In the photos, she was covered in bruises.
Her eyes swollen shut from the injuries. As soon as people read the post and saw those horrifying images, their jaws basically dropped. One of her friends said it looked like something straight out of a movie. But here’s the twist. Just 1 hour after the post went live, police announced that someone had been arrested, and it wasn’t one of Elena’s alleged abusers.
It was Elena Williams herself. Hi, Ellie. Are you all right? Um um if you just listen to my colleague, she’s just going to have to read some off a bit of paper. All right. All right. So, you’re under arrest for being in breach of your court bail in relation to charges of perverting the course of justice.
So you don’t have to say anything, but in Miami defense if you do not mention one question, something which later in court, anything you do say may be given in evidence. The outrage spilled way beyond the small community where she lived. People just couldn’t believe that someone could come forward with a story like this so openly, so bravely, and then end up getting arrested for it. It felt unreal.
Like it honestly didn’t make sense. Before long, that anger turned toward the police and also toward the men Elena Williams had accused. Support for her started exploding online. Hashtags in her name began spreading fast. Videos showing solidarity went viral and posters started appearing all over Barrow Infernace.
Largecale protests followed. More than 100,000 people joined a Justice for Elena page on Facebook and one online fundraising campaign brought in over 20,000. And while people were marching through the streets, smashing windows, donating money, and sharing absolutely everything on social media, no one could have imagined what was coming next because the full truth, deeply disturbing, honestly shocking, was just about to come out.
It was around this time that Elena Williams first came onto the police’s radar. She was 16 years old back then. By all accounts, she lived a pretty quiet life with her mom, her stepdad, and her brothers and sisters. Her parents had split up when she was younger, and she didn’t see her father very often.
The family itself was fairly wellknown around town. Her mom, Allison Williams, worked as an employment adviser and was widely seen as like a real pillar of the community. People said Elena could sometimes seem pretty withdrawn, even a little down. You know, friends mentioned that she occasionally skipped school, choosing instead to hang out with people and go to private house parties.
But they were quick to point out that honestly for a lot of teenagers, that kind of behavior wasn’t anything unusual. Elena Williams sat down at a table to give an interview at the police station. You know, one of those quiet rooms where everything suddenly feels very serious. Can you tell me your full name? My name’s Elena Williams. Before that, she and her mom had already gone to the hospital because there were serious concerns that she might have been assaulted at a party.
The problem was she had a hard time putting together the full picture of what had happened. Things were blurry, fragmented, like pieces missing. You know, Elena Williams told police that after she finished her shift at work earlier than planned, she posted a photo on Snapchat. Once her friends saw it, they started pressuring her to come to a local house party.
At first, she said no. She really didn’t want to go. Um, she pushed back. I wasn’t going to go out, but I got I put on Snapchat that I finished work early. Got a message off one of my mates. Almost immediately, messages started pouring in. People were saying it would just be a small group, a couple of drinks, good vibes, nothing serious, you know, totally chill.
In the end, she gave in and decided to go. The party was at the house of her friend Cameron. According to Elena, the two of them later had a shot of vodka in his bedroom. After that, he tried to kiss her. She didn’t want that at all, so trying to get out of the situation. She said she was going to the bathroom, but he got angry.
He grabbed her by the hair, pulled her back, and forced her down onto the floor. A camera sat on top of my pulled my dress down. cuz it was like off the shoulder dress and he um took my brow down laughing at me. Thought I was going to die. After that, she said she didn’t remember anything at all. Like everything just went blank.
The next thing she knew, she woke up at home. Not long after, messages started coming in on Snapchat from Cameron. And in one of those messages, it said, “I drugged you. robbed you, dumped you, and laughed about it. And I have HIV. Terrified, she went straight to the hospital, like immediately. Cameron, who was 22 years old at the time, said he was completely shocked and firmly denied that anything like that had happened.
He told police he was extremely confused when he saw the screenshots of the Snapchat messages and insisted it wasn’t true, that it couldn’t have happened, that it wasn’t him. He did admit that Elena Williams had been at the party, but he claimed that at some point she became so drunk that he contacted her sister to come help and make sure Elena got home safely.
He said he was genuinely worried about her. You know, concerned for her well-being. In the end, he was released and Elena later stated that she was withdrawing all accusations against him. Still, Cameron remained on bail and under police attention for another 6 months. By the time Elena Williams was 19, she was living in her own apartment after frequent arguments with her mom and stepdad.
She said she was just done with it all and needed her own space. You know, somewhere she could breathe. And it was right around then that she went back to the police once again. Emergency. Police. What’s the emergency? What’s your name? Ellie. What’s been happening that you want him out? He just smacks me. [music] Do you need an ambulance? Ellie, as you come back in, just answer yes or no.
Ellie, if you’re not able to speak, can you just press the number five twice? Okay, [music] Ellie, we’re coming to you with an emergency. Okay, just try and stay as safe as you can. Trang. So his full name is Jordan Trangarov. Yeah. On May 9th, 2019, with bruises all over her face, Elena Williams told police that a man named Jordan Trano had attacked her with a knife, beaten her, and raped her three times.
She showed officers messages she said were from Jordan. Some of them included lines like, “You wanted this. I should have filmed it so I could relive it.” And I’ll find you again and leave you to die. you know, just chilling, absolutely horrifying stuff. Jordan Trener was questioned by police, but he denied everything.
He confirmed that back in March they had gone out together, but claimed that afterward Elena simply disappeared. He said that later that night, he didn’t even see her leave. According to him, he was too busy talking to another girl. He admitted that he and Elena Williams knew each other, but not very well, and he strongly insisted that the messages she showed police were not sent by him.
He appeared completely disoriented by everything that was going on, like he genuinely couldn’t understand how things had escalated this far. That same night, he and the girl he had been talking to, Ebony were actually driven home by police after officers noticed Jordan arguing near a taxi rank. Jordan and Ebony spent the rest of the night at his place.
That looked like a pretty solid alibi, and he was released on bail. But just a few days later, Elena called the police again. This time she claimed that Jordan had forced his way into her apartment and attacked her. For someone who was already out on bail and under investigation, that sounded like a whole new level of recklessness.
Police decided they couldn’t take any more chances. Jordan Treno was arrested and charged with three counts of rape. He pleaded not guilty to all charges and was sent to Preston Prison into a unit for sexual offenders where he waited for trial. Rumors started spreading fast. People were honestly stunned to hear Jordan’s name linked to something so horrific it just didn’t add up for anyone. You know, it felt impossible.
About a month later, Elena was reported missing. And this wasn’t the first time. Her family and friends had contacted police many times before, worried about her safety, and each time she had been found. Officers believed that after everything involving Jordan, she might have run away, and there were serious concerns that she could harm herself.
More and more bruises kept appearing on her body. Police began to suspect that she might be using alcohol, drugs, or possibly both. Then about a month after that, Elena was back at the police station once again to make yet another statement. So, what are we going to talk about today? I was young, stupid, house parties.
I mean that that is how older men got introduced to prom. She said that a few years earlier at one of those parties she met an older man she called Remy at a party she says she never should have been at in the first place. Remy she explained was actually Muhammad Raman a married man the father of four children and someone who was known and respected locally as a successful businessman.
Elena Williams said she had known him since she was 12 and that almost right away he started flirting with her. You know, made me think that was his girlfriend for a long time. According to her, at one party he asked her to go and have sex with one of his friends, calling it a huge favor. Elena Williams said she went along with it.
Afterward, he assured her it would never happen again, that it was just a one-time thing. But it didn’t stop. And then he said it wouldn’t happen again. It was just a oneoff, but then it wasn’t a oneoff. It started getting more and more often, and then it turns out Ramy was getting money when I was having sexual over there.
The detectives listened in horror, trying to wrap their heads around what was really happening in their quiet seaside town. It was like, what did they just uncovered? What was hiding beneath the surface? You know, little pictures under their control. to do whatever they say, to do what we’re told to do, [music] otherwise like Elena Williams said the situation kept escalating.
She claimed she was now being taken to different houses where she was expected to meet multiple men at the same time. Some of those places were as far away as Rodale and Oldm hours of driving from Baron Furnace. You know, she said that Muhammad Raman was the one organizing it all. what looked to her like a large network of men and some kind of organized criminal operation.
She told detectives that Muhammad even tried to sell her for €25,000 in Amsterdam. And on top of that, she had written down a list of names and descriptions of more than 50 other girls who, according to her, were also victims. Women who blew the whistle on police failures to investigate a grooming gang. Today, vindicated.
former sexual health worker Sara Robotham visibly emotional, angry that she’d not been believed. Operation SPAN was deemed a success when it led to the prosecution of nine men in 2012. In the end, nine men were convicted of human trafficking and other serious crimes, and as of January 2024, a total of 42 men had already been convicted, receiving a combined sentence of 432 years in prison.
So far, 47 girls have been officially identified as victims. Over the words of Rotherham abuse survivors, the most powerful part of a report which found South Yorkshire police missed opportunities to protect them and didn’t recognize them as victims. Now, finally, 7 years later, and after 11 months of court cases, this gang of 20 men are in prison for what they did.
3 years for trafficking and actual bodily harm, 11 years for rape. Many of the details of what these men did to their victims are so disturbing, we simply can’t report them. As officers listened to Elena Williams, the parallels felt disturbingly obvious. It was hard not to think back to the past and wonder if they were uncovering something eerily similar all over again.
You know, that concern pushed them to act fast. They arranged new housing for Elena outside of Baron Furnace, fearing that if the men she was talking about ever found out what she had told police, her life could be in real deadly danger. Muhammad Ramzan was quickly arrested and questioned.
At first, he seemed to struggle just to figure out who Elena even was. He told detectives he barely knew her and definitely hadn’t spent time with her. But as investigators began reading out the allegations, the crimes, the locations, the dates, he sat there stunned. He looked completely overwhelmed, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
And he denied every single accusation. I feel disgusted that you my name is being tarnished with something like that. I’m an innocent man being persecuted. After nearly 48 hours in custody and many long hours of questioning, police concluded that at that moment they didn’t have enough grounds to keep him detained.
Muhammad Raman was released on bail. At the same time, the allegations were so serious that the local police department decided to bring in outside resources and set up a large dedicated investigative team. A senior investigator said that given the lessons of history, they could not under any circumstances afford to take risks this time. Okay, so I think you call again.
Over the next few months, Elena Williams became a regular presence at the police station. She worked closely with the investigative team and shared absolutely everything with them. You know, no holding back. She told the team that on June 30th, she had been forced to travel to Blackpool after being told she was very valuable and that more money could be made from her there.
Officers noted just how detailed her account was. She described shops she passed, sounds she heard, street lights, calendars hanging on walls inside houses, even the color of the wallpaper in hallways. Investigators were honestly impressed by how much she remembered. They understood that this level of detail could build a really strong evidentiary foundation.
So they asked if she would be willing to travel back to Blackpool with them in an unmarked car and point out specific locations. She said yes. But the moment they actually arrived in Blackpool, that’s when all of her detailed memories suddenly stopped. Somewhere along here. Do you remember where you were outside when it stopped? No.
From that point on, it turned into a long list of I don’t know and I’m not sure, you know, over and over again. Was it on that route that you took us on or was it somewhere else? Not sure. Um, what should you call it today? Yeah. Yeah. if if at any point turn it back on if someone jumps out. All right. They spent two full days driving around the city, but Elena Williams still couldn’t give them anything specific.
It was frustrating, honestly, like they were going in circles. Meanwhile, other officers were visiting hotels and bed and breakfasts in the area. They shared Elena’s details and asked whether anyone had booked a room in her name on June 30th. Eventually, at the Seview Hotel, a receptionist confirmed it.
Yes, Ellie Williams had indeed booked a room there. She had made the reservation 2 days earlier through Booking.com. CCTV footage showed her arriving at the hotel alone at around 8:30 in the evening, you know, by herself, walking in calmly. About 1 hour later, she left the hotel and several other cameras caught her inside a few nearby shops.
She paid for instant noodles and milk, then went straight back to her room. At the same time, she had already told police that different men were driving her by car to various locations. But the front desk was able to provide data from her key card, and it showed that after she returned to her room that night, the door wasn’t opened again for almost 24 hours.
She never left, and no one entered her room. In fact, she was logged into BBC i Player and was watching videos on her phone, you know, just there by herself. After that, she traveled home by bus to the small community of Barrow infess. By now, with Jordan Treno in prison and Muhammad Raman under investigation for extremely serious crimes, the entire town was basically talking about nothing else.
Police went doortodo speaking with the girls Elena Williams had named as victims of this alleged grooming ring. But none of them understood what the officers were talking about or what Elena was even referring to. One girl said she was completely stunned when police knocked on her door. She said she had only ever been at one party with Elena and it absolutely hadn’t ended in anything like that.
They went to the same school but were in different classes. And she said she had always felt there was something a little off about Elena’s behavior. But this this was on a whole other level. It just didn’t make sense. And that realization combined with the hotel CCTV footage led police to a deeply disturbing conclusion.
Elena Williams had been lying. By that point, police already had enough grounds to arrest Elena Williams for perverting the course of justice. But when officers went to confront her with the evidence they’d uncovered, she had disappeared once again. Eventually, a young woman, her brother’s girlfriend, called 911.
She said that late that night, she had been driving around town looking for Elena and finally found her alone. disoriented, swaying on a bridge. Elena got into her car and the woman drove her home, making sure she went inside safely, you know, just trying to do the right thing. About 20 minutes later, police arrived, still intending to arrest her.
It was around 10 minutes past 1:00 in the morning when Elena opened the door. Blood was coming from her mouth. Her eyes were swollen and her shoulders were covered in red marks. You all right? Sit down. Sit down for me. Sit down. This was nothing like what they had expected to see after hearing the story from her brother’s girlfriend.
It just didn’t line up at all, you know. Still, without wasting a second, officers immediately took Elena Williams to the hospital. Um, I’ll help you. I’ll help you. She’ll get you an ambulance. When officers asked what had happened, she gave them another name, someone called Oliver. She told a story about being forced to travel to Preston, [music] where she said he made her take drugs and then did things to her that were honestly unimaginable.
She also claimed that he was part of a sex trafficking network operating in Spain and said she had his phone number so police could track him down. You know, follow the trail. You can remember alcohol. Yeah. She was clearly intoxicated and admitted that she had been drinking alcohol and smoking spice.
Spice is a synthetic drug that originally appeared on the recreational drug market as something meant to imitate the effects of cannabis, but it’s extremely dangerous because of how potent it is and the way it affects the brain and the body. People often call it the zombie drug since it can cause seizures, intense anxiety, and even full-blown psychosis.
CCTV footage showed her getting off a train in Preston exactly the way she had described it. When police located the man she accused, they were also able to identify him on camera. He turned out to be an apprentice electrician who was in the city that night celebrating his birthday when he happened to run into Elena.
In reality, he had stopped her just to ask for a lighter, you know, something completely ordinary. They talked for about 20 minutes [music] and then went into an alleyway. He admitted that he kissed her and a bit awkwardly mentioned a brief, possibly clumsy sexual encounter. Just over 1 minute later, Elena was seen leaving the alley, lighting a cigarette, and walking away.
After that, she went into a public restroom and stood in front of the mirror for a long time, rubbing her eyes. Not long after she got on a train and traveled back to Barrow Furnace. That was roughly 1 hour before police knocked on her door. At [music] that point, there were no visible injuries to her face.
And while CCTV can only ever show a limited part of what happens, [music] what she later described simply did not match what the footage showed. Oliver, who also went by Olly, even sent her a message afterward asking to add him on Snapchat, hoping to see her again. He told police that he thought she was very attractive and was happy he had met her.
She, on the other hand, told him she was from Wigan and claimed she was planning to work at a nightclub in Preston. Both of those statements were not true. I only called her because I was happy we’d met and I wanted to see if we could meet up again, he explained. That’s literally why I called her. I just wanted to see her one more time, you know.
Police said that based on their analysis, it all looked like a completely random encounter and he genuinely seemed interested in her. You know, nothing forced, nothing pre-planned. When Elena Williams got off the train in Barrow Furnace, the story she told police was that two older Asian men were waiting for her. She claimed they took her to an apartment where she was brutally beaten, but the cameras told a very different story.
CCTV showed her walking alone for quite some time before, just as she herself had said she was spotted on a bridge by her brother’s girlfriend. That woman confirmed that no one was with Elena when she picked her up, and that at that point, Elena had no visible injuries to her face or body. She drove her home and immediately called police to report that Elena had returned.
And then just 20 minutes later, when officers arrived, Elena already had blood on her face, and her body was covered in marks and injuries. Aside from her brother’s girlfriend, neighbors hadn’t seen or heard anything either. Detectives came to the conclusion that there was no explanation left other than that Elena had caused those injuries to herself.
Even imagining something like that was incredibly difficult. The situation was moving at lightning speed with new names appearing one after another. She accused yet another man of rape, someone named Lee. She also told people that she had a young son named Bailey and even claimed that she had spent several weeks in the hospital in a coma after an alleged illegal abortion carried out with knitting needles. None of that was true.
Medical records confirmed that she had never given birth and had never been in a coma. Eventually, Elena Williams was arrested and formally charged with perverting the course of justice. Police then showed her the CCTV footage from the C view hotel. Yeah, these are pictures that are taken from the CCTV at the boy hotel as you come up.
I’ll explain. What we’ve ended up with is information that contradicts your version of events. Do you understand how serious this is? I do. I feel bad. She then changed her story and claimed that the men from the group had found out she was cooperating with the police. Realizing that her life was in danger, she said she had been forced to go into hiding and stay in hotels.
You know, just trying to survive. I am really, really sorry for it, but I haven’t felt safe enough. They basically know that I’ve been speaking to the police and they’ve told me to tell you certain things. I would put you off the scent of tracing them. Difficulty is that you’ve told us lies. I know.
If you tell lies, it’s hard to believe the truth because lies have been said. I get it. I do get it. But I don’t get these bruises for no reason, you know. My concern is now, how did you get those bruises? How you tell me? Self-inflicted. You have an alarm. When investigators pointed out that they could simply check her flight records to verify the story about human trafficking in Italy, she admitted that it wasn’t true.
And when she claimed that Muhammad Raman had taken her to Amsterdam to sell her at auction, police discovered that she actually had been in Amsterdam but with her sister and her sister’s boyfriend. They even stayed in the same hotel room together. You know, bank records also showed that Muhammad was in a B and Q store in England that very same day.
As Elena’s partial confessions began to come out, the court agreed to release Jordan Trango, who was still awaiting trial on three rape charges that he had always firmly denied. He was released after spending 10 weeks in a unit for sexual offenders. Later on, he said that prison had been a horrible place. Honestly, just disgusting.
Being in there when you know you didn’t do anything wrong is like a hundred times worse. He said, “I was surrounded by dangerous offenders, stuck in a unit for sexual crimes, and honestly, as you can imagine, that’s not a nice place to be at all.” For several months after his release, he had to leave Barrowin Furnace.
You know, it just wasn’t safe or realistic for him to stay there anymore. I thought it would finally be over, he said. But on the very first day after I moved, someone yelled rapist at me. And that’s when it really hit me. No matter where I went, someone would always know. I was basically chased out of everywhere.
You know, there was no escaping it. Elena Williams was released on bail and moved back in with her mom. She was placed under a strict curfew. You know, very tight restrictions on her day-to-day life. Nearly one full year passed while police continued gathering evidence and building the case. And this is where we circle back to the very beginning of today’s episode.
On May 19th, Elena’s family once again reported her missing. In just one year alone, she had been reported missing more than 30 times. Eventually, late that night, officers found her out in a field. She was dressed entirely in black with a hood pulled over her head and a backpack on her shoulders. She was talking extremely fast and seemed agitated, almost wired.
As they got closer, they realized she was covered in blood with both eyes badly bruised. Sitting in the backseat of the police car, she said she had been dragged into a vehicle, taken to a house, and beaten by 10 Asian men. These were some of the most severe injuries officers had ever seen.
As soon as the sun came up, she was rushed straight to the hospital. Police returned to the field where she had been found, searching for any additional evidence. Before long, they discovered a hammer and seized it for forensic testing. Her injuries were so brutal that they were hard to look at, and some of the photos weren’t even included.
Those same images were later posted by her on Facebook the very next day. They went viral and set off the chain of events we’ve been talking about this whole time. Detectives later said they were watching someone spiral to a point where she could eventually have taken her own life. She was clearly extremely unstable, drinking heavily, using drugs like spice and cocaine, running away from home, and likely harming herself.
Because she had violated the terms of her bail, police now had grounds to arrest her once again. So, you’re under arrest for being in breach of the court bail in relation to charges of perverting the course of justice. They had no idea that while she was in custody, her Facebook post was spreading like wildfire.
During a search of her apartment, detectives seized eight more hammers and several mobile phones. Experts then spent an enormous amount of time analyzing huge volumes of accounts and messages. Most of her communication happened through Snapchat, and with the platform’s cooperation, police were able to access her Snapchat data.
Professor Lee Grant, a specialist in forensic linguistics, examined the messages between her and the men she claimed were her abusers. He said he found striking similarities in wording and phrasing across all of the disputed messages. His conclusion was clear and unambiguous. Every single one of those messages had been written by her.
Between October and December 2019, she had been messaging a guy she’d known since school named Harry Cooper. They flirted back and forth, and when the messages became more sexual, she changed his contact name to ex Harm, a person she had reported to police as a trafficker trying to recruit her. Later, she changed the contact name again, this time to ex Ramy, so that when Harry called her, she could show the call to police and claim it was Muhammad Raman calling.
She also sent messages to herself, pretending to be Muhammad, allegedly from his account, apologizing for everything he had done to her. Snapchat data further confirmed that the supposed account belonging to Jordan Trango Tren 7 had actually been created by Elena herself. Another phone registered at her home address was used to create an account under the name Rolo Kelsey, a person she completely made up and also described as a human trafficker.
Yet another account, Salsa, was created by her in early July 2019. She was also using a different phone provided by a Barrow-based charity that supports women affected by abuse and sexual violence called Women’s Community Matters. From that phone, she sent messages while pretending to be another alleged victim of the supposed trafficking network, someone named Nicole.
Every accusation she made was ultimately disproven by police, either through phone records or CCTV footage. Forensic results from the hammer also came back. It contained DNA from only one person, Elena Williams. A pathologist concluded that her injuries were consistent with blows inflicted by her own hand, specifically her right hand.
CCTV footage was also found showing her buying the same hammer that was later discovered in the field and it confirmed that she had been alone the entire time. The 10-we trial began in October 2022 and to put it mildly, it was extraordinarily complex. Dr. Lucy Bacon, a forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Elena multiple times, diagnosed her with complex post-traumatic stress disorder.
She said it stemmed from childhood trauma. According to her, Elena displayed all the core symptoms, including suicidal thoughts and substance abuse. She also suggested there may have been undisclosed sexual abuse during Elena’s childhood and noted that social services had been involved with the family until Elena was 8 years old, though the details remain unknown. Dr.
Martin Lock, testifying for the prosecution, stated that he was unable to diagnose Elena with any psychiatric disorder. Dr. Bacon suggested this difference might be connected to the fact that he was male, noting that Elena had refused to engage with some male medical staff while in prison.
A key part of the prosecution’s case focused on the hammer and the self-inflicted injuries. However, in court, Elena denied harming herself. And stated, “I’m not a psychopath.” The jury took just 3 and 1/2 hours to find her guilty on eight counts of perverting the course of justice. Unusually for the United Kingdom, the sentencing was broadcast on television.
This will inevitably be a lengthy prison sentence, and I have a great deal of information about this defendant’s situation from her evidence in the case and the many psychiatric reports. By way of very broad summary, this defendant made serious allegations of a sexual nature against a large number of men between the October of 2017 and March 2020.
She went on a night out on the 8th of March 2019 into the 9th of March 2019 with Mr. Trengo and others. I’m perfectly satisfied that there was no basis for her believing that she had been sexually assaulted that night. In order to support that allegation, she created a number of false messages purporting to be from Mr. Trengo. One of the accounts she used to send these messages was created from her family home using the IP address of the Wi-Fi network there. Mr.
Trengo was not even there. She knew it was false. She did indeed have injuries, but she’d caused them to herself to support her allegation. And as we will see, this was to become a feature of her conduct. On the 18th of June 2019, the defendant made allegation to detective inspector Nutter that she had been the victim of sex traffickers.
Her account mainly centered around a local businessman, Muhammad Ramsean. She supplied a long list of men who were traffickers. They were not. All of this was complete fabrication. She created an extensive cast of traffickers. Some were invented altogether. Others existed but were not traffickers at all. The defendant manipulated friends and work colleagues to involve them unwittingly in her deceptions.
She invented people in her phone. The females she named as co-victims of trafficking were spoken to. None of them had been trafficked. A home office pathologist gave evidence to the effect that the serious injuries she had sustained were completely inconsistent with her account and completely consistent with being self-inflicted with the hammer which she had bought.
Though she was an adult at the time of the commission of the vast majority of this offending, I must bear in mind her maturity as well as her chronological age. There is evidence that she is immature. Apart from her age, there is some other personal mitigation. It is troubling to say the least that she shows no significant sign of remorse, even continuing to profess the truth of her allegations.
I agree with the conclusion of Dr. lock that there is no evidence upon which I could conclude that there is a complex post-traumatic stress disorder since she has been found guilty. The defendant has hinted at other sources of trauma but has given no real indication as to what it could be.
Of course, I’ve considered whether the aarent nature of these offenses 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 offenses, but I cannot conclude that she chose to make her Facebook post of the 20th of May 2020 for any other reason than that she intended to create an impact within the town.
I accept that there was no direct incitement to do anything, but it was entirely foreseeable that there will be considerable community impact upon those of Asian or Pakistani heritage. She cannot be held wholly or directly responsible for the criminal behavior of others who used her allegations as an excuse for their own inexcusable conduct.
The harm of this offending extends to an undermining of public confidence in the criminal justice system. We are aware that sex trafficking of young females does occur. There is a risk that genuine victims will, as a result of this defendant’s actions, feel deterred from reporting it. In this case, I make reduction for the defendant’s age.
Then for personal mitigation in relation to count nine only, I reduce the sentence for credit for a guilty plea. I then further adjust the sentences for totality. These are the sentences that you will serve. On count one, there will be a sentence of 6 months imprisonment. On counts 3 to five, the sentence will be 3 years imprisonment, concurrent on each count, but consecutive to the sentence on count one.
giving a total so far of three and a half years. There will be sentences of 5 years on counts five, six, and seven, concurrent with one another, but consecutive to the sentences already imposed. Finally, there will be a sentence of 1 year and 3 months imprisonment on count 8 and 6 months imprisonment on count 9. Those sentences to run concurrently with each other and the other sentences imposed.
That gives a total sentence of 8 1/2 years imprisonment. You will serve half of the total sentence of imprisonment in custody, after which you will be released on license. A young woman whose lies tore a community apart and drove three men to attempt suicide is starting a long jail sentence tonight. In the end, Elena Williams, who was 22 years old at the time, was sentenced to 8 and 1/2 years in prison.
She will be eligible to apply for parole for the first time in 2027. A petition calling for her sentence to be extended was rejected just like Elellanena’s own appeal against the conviction. In a letter of apology to the judge, Elellena partially admitted to lying. She said that she had acted wrongly in certain situations and added that she hadn’t been thinking clearly when she published the post on Facebook.
I feel no sense of triumph, only sadness for the loss of the years, the impact on my family. Here we are. and the true impact that that this will have on true victims. That’s the loss of you. Mr. Ramzan says he’s now supporting Jordan Trenov, who spent 10 weeks in jail after Ellie accused him of rape. Both say they tried to take their own lives because of the stress.
If you were able to say anything to Ellie Williams today, what would you say? Why? I want to know why you have done this to us. Why? Because she’s not only done it to me and Moore, she’s done it to our families. And there’s innocent children and kids involved in in our families along with that and she’s destroyed their lives as along with ours.
Allison Williams, Elena’s mother said the sentence states that Ellie was a victim of exploitation and human trafficking from the age of 12. Personally, I don’t believe that because as her mother, I would have known if something like that had been happening to her at that age. But when it comes to our family, the ruling says that she told the truth, that she was a victim in the way she described.
And as her mother, I believe her. There were things she talked about that I believe were not true. There were parts she made up. But I also do not believe that Ellie caused those injuries to herself. She could not have done that to herself. There is so much that people still don’t know about Ellie and about what she’s been through.
And if they did know, they would think differently. For Ellie Williams’s mother, it’s a devastating verdict. The court has decided she is a liar about really serious things. Yeah, that’s correct. And in the eyes of the law, I’ve got to follow that verdict and and and accept that. But she’s a happy little thing.
[snorts] And um so I miss that. I miss that energy in the house and her being here. But um she’s uh she’ll be back again at some point. So we just got to look forward to that time. Williams also addressed the money. More than £20,000 raised through online fundraising had supposedly been meant to pay for private prosecutions against Elena’s alleged abusers.
After a wave of angry questions about where the money had gone, Allison said that £13,000 had been donated to two charities supporting people experiencing homelessness. However, Shane Yell, who had organized the fundraiser, said he had begun legal action to recover the funds. Just over £7,000 were returned to him by the bank after an anti-fraud review.
He then donated £3,600 to the Furnace Multicultural Community Forum and another £3,600 to the James Bulger Memorial Trust. Allison was also suspended from membership in the Labour Party. At the same time, calls began growing louder for stricter regulations around social media. Some of Elena’s posts were viewed more than 100,000 times, making it incredibly difficult for police to control the spread of information or separate truth from fiction.
And honestly, we all know how fast the internet moves. In just minutes, something can go viral. Once it’s out there, it’s out there forever. And as the saying goes, you can’t really put the genie back in the bottle. The Online Safety Act 2023 [music] was created to regulate speech and content online and made direct reference to Elena’s case.
The law gives the relevant government secretary the power to identify, restrict, suppress, or formally record a wide range of speech and media content deemed harmful. Cumbria police later said they had to investigate more than 150 crimes as a result of Elena’s Facebook post. 83 of those were classified as hate crimes. Doug Marshall, the lead detective on the case, described the situation as a truly appalling state of affairs.
To this day, there’s still a lot of speculation about what might have driven her to do all of this. Some theories suggest she wanted to imitate movie or TV story lines like Taken or the BBC drama Three Girls, which by the way was based on real events. Others point to the influence of drugs and alcohol or a desire to live at the center of attention and maintain constant interaction with the police.
They were literally hanging on her every word. One investigator said she had one overwhelming need to be believed. She desperately wanted people to believe her. It’s easy to understand why that post exploded the way it did. Seeing those photos alongside that caption was bound to shock and outrage anyone. People put themselves in her place.
They saw her as their own daughter, their friend, their sister. It hit the most sensitive nerve first in the local community and then across the entire United Kingdom. For most people, it’s almost impossible to imagine that someone could make something like this up, let alone say it out loud and then watch it spiral into something so horrifying.
Police spent years investigating the claims, trying to uncover what they believed to be a massive organized crime network. They weren’t just fighting for Elena. They were fighting for the 60 girls she said had also been affected. It took an extraordinary number of man-hour and pulled resources away from other people who genuinely needed help from cases that truly could have changed lives.
And the men who found themselves accused of some of the most disgusting crimes imaginable. What they went through is almost impossible to put into words. And that is something they will carry with them forever. Had rapist spray painted on my house, my windows smashed, you know. So I knew I wasn’t going to be coming out to a nice environment.
I wasn’t going to be welcomed. I didn’t want to leave my house. It came to the point where I didn’t leave my house. It was just so bad. Her support started to withdraw from her in around January and that’s when a lot more people started to believe us guys. Um which was a relief in a way but it did take a while. It took 3 to four years to actually get people to understand that we were innocent people. threats.
We had we had messages like the people are going to rape my wife in front of me. From Islam from Islamophobia to racism to just general hate, people wishing me dead. Mr. Ramson says his children were also threatened. Did you say that they had fire extinguishers, baseball bats next to the beds for safety? Cuz we had threats.
People were going to burn us, burn the shops down, burn us down. And do you think that the majority of the town thought that you were a sex offender? I I think yes, I would say yes, they did. Muhammad Raman said he lived in constant fear, walking through the streets and feeling like people were turning around to stare at him.
It completely destroyed me, he said. I smashed a bottle over my own head. I wanted to kill myself because of what this did to my reputation. It was ruined. Jordan Trango described a similar experience. I tried to take my own life because of this. He said, “I was diagnosed with complex PTSD because of everything that happened.” Jordan became a father in August 2021, but he says it was hard to bond with his son while the court case involving Elena kept getting delayed again and again.
Oliver, often called Ollie, stopped working and studying after the accusations and spent a long time seeking mental health support. Cameron said the online abuse was so intense that he was afraid to even pick up his child from daycare, worried about what might happen to him. Even men Elena had never named said they started looking over their shoulders while walking down the street and claimed they still feel the effects of this story today.
Sagid said he had lived in Barrowin Furnace for most of his life and that the impact on the town’s Asian community was beyond anything he could have imagined. After the Facebook post went viral, Sagid said his business almost came to a complete halt. Trade dropped by 95% virtually overnight.
Another local resident, Adel, who also ran a fast food place, lost tens of thousands of pounds in income. He had to take out loans and borrow money from friends and family just to survive. He said people started looking at him differently, and even when customers eventually came back, their behavior had changed. The impact was also incredibly powerful for people who had themselves survived abuse.
One of Elena’s friends, who had lived through years of abuse, said that reading Elena’s post gave her the courage to speak out about her own experiences. But when the truth later came out, the sense of betrayal completely broke her heart. It felt like a domino effect, she said. Everyone started coming forward with their stories, and it helped you feel like you weren’t alone.
The last thing we wanted was to doubt her because we know what it’s like when people don’t believe you. Maggie Oliver, a former detective who played a key role in exposing the grooming gang case in Rodale, said this case left her feeling deeply saddened. She had been so disturbed by how the Rochdale case was originally handled that she left Greater Manchester Police and became a whistleblower.
Today, she runs a foundation supporting victims of abuse. When Elena first made her accusations, Maggie supported the family and referred them to the Center for Women’s Justice. But now, she says, “A painful question remains. How do victims and survivors across the country feel after this? Will they start to doubt whether they’ll be believed if they speak out?” One of the detectives who worked on Elena’s case said those fears were very real.
He admitted the idea that this single case could discourage genuine victims from asking for help was deeply upsetting, and he said he truly hoped that would not happen. Adele summed it up like this. We were declared guilty before there was any real evidence. We were tried and convicted by social media. And the question that will always remain in this case is simple and haunting. Why?
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
