“Please, what’s the emergency?”
“What’s your name? What’s been happening that you want him out? He’s just slapped me. Do you need an ambulance?”
“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?”
“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 it may harm your defense if you do not mention one question something which will later rely in court. Anything you do say may be given as evidence.”
“I wasn’t going to go out, but I got… I put on Snapchat that I finished work early, and got a message off one of my mates.”
The 20th of May 2020. We start today’s episode in the middle of the UK’s lockdown. Barrow-in-Furness is a place that owes its existence to the sea. During this COVID crisis, Barrow has experienced it so terribly, dreadfully, the worst-hit town in the UK according to the media, the highest number of cases in the country. The port town of Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria was described as almost like a ghost town.
The streets were empty and most people were inside and online.
One of those people was 20-year-old Ellena Williams, and she was on Facebook. After typing out a lengthy paragraph, she hit share on a post that would go viral almost as soon as it went live.
“I think this is the hardest post I’m ever going to write,” it began. “Yesterday, I was put into the back of a car and taken to an address to have sex with three Asian men. Afterwards, I was beaten to teach me a lesson.”
She continued. She went on to speak about years of abuse, rape, grooming, and torture, as well as being trafficked to different countries. She shared pictures of her injuries—injuries that looked so painful they made you wince when you saw them. She was covered in bruises, her eyes were swollen shut, and she had ‘RAT’ carved into her stomach. She listed how over the years, her many abusers had broken her ribs and the bones in her face, tried to cut off her breasts, put cigarettes out on her, and dislocated her arm. She said they had given her drugs to the point that she was nearly addicted to heroin, and many times just dumped her naked and left her to die.
People’s mouths fell open as soon as they read it and pored over all the awful pictures. One of her friends said it was something that would have been the plot to a film. Within an hour of the post going live, the police had someone in custody, but it was not one of Ellena’s abusers. It was Ellena Williams herself.
“Hi Ellie, are you all right? Um… um… if you just listen to my call…”
“She’s just going to have to read some off a bit of paper. All right.”
“Right, so you’re under arrest for being in breach of court bail in relation to charges of perverting the course of justice. So you don’t have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which will later rely in court. Anything you do say may be given as evidence.”
The outrage spread further afield than the small community in which she lived. No one could believe that someone could come forward so bravely to share their story and be met with an arrest. It was unfathomable. Outrage at the police soon followed, as well as the men that Ellena had accused. Hashtags trended for her; videos in support of her went equally viral and posters went up across Barrow. Huge protests were taking place. More than 100,000 people joined the ‘Justice for Ellie’ Facebook page, and one online fundraising campaign raised more than £20,000.
But as people marched through the streets, smashed windows, donated money, and shared everything and anything they could on social media, no one could ever have predicted what would happen next, as the full and deeply unsettling truth was about to come out.
Ellena Williams first came onto the police’s radar in November 2017. 16 years old at the time, she lived a quiet life by all accounts, living with her mom, stepdad, and siblings. Her parents had split when she was younger and she didn’t see too much of her dad. Her family were quite well known around town as her mom, Allison, was a local counselor and described as a pillar of the community. People said Ellena could go through periods of being quite quiet, maybe even a little subdued. Friends said she would occasionally skip school, much preferring to be out socializing at house parties, but they said it was nothing out of the ordinary for a lot of teenagers.
Just after 1 p.m. on November 22nd, 2017, Ellena sat down for a taped interview in the police office.
“Can you tell me your full name?”
“My name’s Ellena Williams.”
She had already gone to the hospital with her mother after concerns that she had been sexually assaulted at a party, but was struggling to piece everything together. Ellena told them that after finishing a shift early, she uploaded a picture to Snapchat. After her friends saw, they encouraged her to come to a local house party, but she said no; she wasn’t feeling it.
“I wasn’t going to go out, but I got… I put on Snapchat that I’d finished work earlier, got a message off one of my mates. They said it would just be a small group, some drinks, and a good laugh.”
So she finally gave in and turned up. It was at her friend Cameron’s house. She went on to say that she and Cameron took a shot of vodka in his bedroom and then he had tried to kiss her. She didn’t want to engage and made an excuse to go to the toilet, but he got angry and dragged her back by her hair, throwing her onto the floor.
“A camera had sat on top of my lap. It pulled my dress down ’cause it was like off-the-shoulder dress, and he um took my bra down, laughing at me.”
“Thought I was going to die.”
She said she couldn’t remember anything after that. She woke up in her own house and then started receiving messages on Snapchat from Cameron. One said, “Drugged, fuck you, mugged, laughed at you, I’ve got HIV.”
Terrified, she then went straight to hospital. 22-year-old Cameron was horrified and denied that anything had happened. He was so confused when he saw the Snapchat screenshots; he said it simply wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true; that was not him.
He said, “Yes, Ellena was at his party, but she was so drunk. At one point, he contacted her sister to try and help, and to make sure she got home okay. He was concerned about her.”
He was let go and Ellena eventually said she was dropping everything against him. However, he remained on bail and the police’s radar for a further 6 months after this.
2 years later, the now 19-year-old Ellena was living in her own flat after frequent fights with her mom and stepdad; she said she was sick of it and needed her own space. It was at this time that she would contact the police again.
“Emergency, please. What’s the emergency?”
“What’s your name? What’s been happening that you want him out? He’s just slapped me. Do you need an ambulance?”
“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?”
“Okay Ellie, we’re coming to you with an emergency, okay? Just try and stay as safe as you can.”
“Trang… so this full name is…”
“People… threats. We had… we had messages like ‘People are going to rape my wife in front of me.’ From Islamophobia to racism, to just general hate, people wishing me dead.”
Mr. Ramson says his children were also threatened.
“Did you… did you say that they had fire extinguishers, baseball bats next to the beds for the safety?”
“Cuz we had threats, people were going to burn us, burn the shops down, burn us down.”
“And do you think that they… they… they… the majority of the town thought that you were a sex offender?”
“I… I think yes. I would say yes, they did.”
Muhammad lived in fear, walking around streets where everyone’s heads would turn and stare. He said,
“It absolutely ruined me to the point where I smashed a bottle on my head. I wanted to kill myself because of the damage it did. The reputation I’d made was ruined.”
Jordan was much the same and said,
“I tried killing myself over it. I got diagnosed with complex PTSD because of it all.”
He became a father in August 2021 but says he struggled to bond with his son as her trial kept getting postponed. Ollie stopped working and studying after the accusations and spent a lot of time seeking treatment for mental health issues. And Cameron said the abuse he got online was so bad he was scared to pick his son up from nursery because of what might happen to him. Even men that had not been named by Ellena found themselves watching over their shoulder as they walked down the street and still feel the aftermath today.
Sajid lived in Barrow most of his life and he said the impact on the Asian community there was unlike anything he could have ever imagined. After the Facebook post went viral, Sajid’s trade dropped by 95% almost overnight. Another local man named Adel also ran a takeout and lost tens of thousands of pounds in revenue. He had to take out a loan and borrow money from family and friends just to get by. He said people just looked at him differently, even customers that came back looked at him differently.
The impact of this on people that had suffered abuse was also massive. One of Ellena’s friends who had suffered years of abuse herself said reading Ellena’s post gave her the courage to tell her own story and the betrayal she felt when the truth came out broke her heart. She said,
“It was like a domino effect. Everyone was coming forward to tell their story to make her feel like she wasn’t alone. The last thing we wanted to do was not believe her, because we know what it’s like to not be believed.”
Maggie Oliver used to be a detective and played a pivotal role in the Rochdale grooming gang case. She was so appalled at how the Rochdale case had been handled that she eventually resigned from Greater Manchester Police and became a whistleblower to expose the poor handling of the case by her own team. She now runs a foundation for abuse survivors and said that this case had left her feeling saddened. When Ellena first made her allegations, Maggie had supported her family and referred them to the Center for Women’s Justice. She said:
“What about all the victims and survivors throughout the country who are now feeling uncomfortable and wondering, are they going to be believed or will they come forward?”
One detective who worked Ellena’s case reiterated this and said the thought of what happened in this isolated incident putting real victims off coming forward was very upsetting and he hoped this would not be the case. Adel said:
“We were branded guilty before any real evidence had come out. We were tried and found guilty by social media, and one question that will always remain in this case is why.”
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
