The mum of a woman who died about raped and groomed said her daughter ‘was just trying to get people to listen to her’.
Eleanor Williams, 22, has been jailed after falsely claiming to have been the victim of an Asian grooming gang.
In a Facebook post in May 2020, which was shared more than 100,000 times, she described being beaten, abused and trafficked by the men.
Williams also posted pictures of her injuries, but a court heard that she had caused them to herself, with a hammer.
She was jailed for eight-and-a-half years after appearing at court yesterday.
Williams’ mother, Allison, spoke to Sky News about the moment her daughter’s verdict came in.
She told the broadcaster: ‘I can’t describe it. I still can’t take it in really. It just doesn’t feel real. The person the press are portraying is not the person I know.’
Allison said she accepts her daughter did tell lies but added: ‘I believe she was just trying to get people to listen to her.’
Williams’ sister, Lucy, also spoke out about the ordeal.
While she, like her mother, admits the 22-year-old lied about the men who were forced to defend the false claims in court, she does think others were responsible.
Lucy claims Williams received ‘constant’ and ‘very weird’ phone messages as well as threatening Snapchats.
She admitted that her sister did not get auctioned during a trip to Amsterdam, as was claimed, as they shared a room and nothing was out the ordinary.
But they did have other experiences, Lucy claims.
She told Sky News: ‘One of the men was harassing Ellie at the bar and some of our friends had seen it and they’d warned him off. And there was a takeaway around the corner from the nightclub, and Ellie was coming home that night with me.
‘He grabbed her outside of the takeaway and started pulling her arm, saying: “Come on, we’re going.”
‘And she was like: “No, I’m going with my sister”, and his face, he was so angry with her. She did come home with me, and then the next weekend she came back black and blue, worse than we’ve ever seen.”
Lucy added it was her that urged Williams to go to the police after seeing the extent of her injuries.
In sentencing remarks which were broadcast on television, Honorary Recorder of Preston Judge Robert Altham said: ‘It is troubling to say the least that she shows no significant signs of remorse.’
He said there is no explanation for why the defendant made the allegations, which he described as ‘complete fiction’.
He added: ‘Unless and until the defendant chooses to say why she has told these lies we will not know.’
First appear at Family of woman who lied about being raped said she wanted to be ‘listened’ to
