Mo Ramzan sits in his living room in Barrow-in-Furness, desperately trying to prove his innocence. Six days ago, he was the owner of a local ice cream truck and was happy with his family life. He was then falsely named as the leader of a sex-processing gang in Pakistan. Sitting across from Moe on a maroon sofa is Tommy Robinson, a white supremacist, anti-Muslim activist and co-founder of the English Defense League (EDL). He is the only person Mo thinks can help clear his name.
Less than a week after our conversation, Mo’s life was forever changed by a Facebook post that sparked a nationwide outcry. On May 20, 2020, a frail young woman named Eleanor Williams took to social media and shared a long and graphic post detailing her horrific experience at the hands of “takeaway men…mostly Pakistani men.” A sex-processing business in a small town in Cumbria.
Williams described how her assailants raped her, stripped her, beat her, burned her and even cut off her fingers. The post, which showed the then 20-year-old with a black eye, cuts and bruises, has been shared more than 100,000 times. Within days, the people of Barrow took to the streets demanding justice. More than £22,000 has been raised on crowdfunder to support the private prosecution of her attacker. Her story resonated as far away as America and Australia, but here in Britain it quickly stirred and ignited already smoldering racial tensions.
Asian men in this vast white town were vilified and their businesses vilified and attacked. A restaurant owner receives a phone call telling him his wife will be raped in front of their two young children. Ramzan, the owner of an ice cream van, is appointed as the grooming gangmaster, and a white arrow stands. He is accused of leading a group of men to rape and abuse Williams at sex parties.
As his name spread throughout the town and throughout England, he and his family were also threatened with extreme violence. They expected their homes to be firebombed at any moment.
The locals were determined that this was a story of good and evil. Williams’ supporters stood on the side of justice and defended an innocent and vulnerable girl who had been subjected to horrific abuse. They had heard about predatory gangs before. They were furious that such a heinous attack had come to their town and claimed “one of their daughters.”
None of the claims were true except in this case. As the town soon discovered, all of Williams’ injuries were self-inflicted. She often beat herself with a hammer, causing her eyes to swell and draw blood from her flesh. She cut her own fingers, arms and legs to provide “evidence” of the abuse. The whole incident was a shocking hoax.
Mr. Williams was arrested and, after a trial in 2022, was found guilty of nine counts of perverting the course of justice. She was jailed for eight-and-a-half years, but was released after serving just two years under Labour’s early release programme.
In a week when pressure for new investigations into grooming gangs operating in the UK has risen to the top of the political agenda, the retelling of Williams’ harrowing case in a new Channel 4 documentary couldn’t be more timely. I don’t think it will be easy. Indeed, the juxtaposition cleverly highlights the dangers of misinformation, especially in areas where tensions over race, class, and power are high.
Last summer’s race riots, fueled by social media, showed how volatile these situations can be, and how violence can quickly erupt from below the surface. In Accusations: The Fake Grooming Scandal, we are reminded of how dangerous the rapid transmission of information through social media is, and how fragile truth is in the age of misinformation. When facts get lost in translation, or when certain groups are maliciously maligned or singled out, the consequences can be devastating.
“Rarely have I come across a story where the debate was so intense and toxic,” says Colin Barr, the documentary’s executive producer. He and his team began thinking about reporting on Williams’ case shortly after her post went viral. The importance of the story was clear and the plot was fascinating, but once production began on the show, its full complexity became clear.
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“There’s something about social media. There’s something about the subject matter and the racial element,” Barr continued. “There’s something about the nature of a small town like Barrow, and I think when all these factors collide, it creates a localized ferocity, and that’s quite frightening. Certainly from all sides. It’s terrifying for everyone involved, including Ellie’s family.”
It’s a similar clash of forces to what we’re witnessing this week. Elon Musk’s tirade directed at Labour’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and later cabinet minister Jess Phillips was the same rhetoric that Williams used to promote his policies five years ago, with a ripple effect. is producing. Conservative MP Robert Jenrick has already been accused of stoking racial divisions after he referred to “people of other cultures” during a discussion about a possible systematic cover-up in Oldham. are. Meanwhile, Phillips said Musk had “put[her]life at risk” by telling X (formerly Twitter) that he labeled her a “rape-genocide apologist” and said she should be jailed. ”
In the Varrow case, the public did not know this, but police had been investigating Williams’ claims for more than a year before her Facebook post went viral. Furthermore, this was not the first false accusation she had committed. In 2017, at the age of 16, she reported to police that a man named “C” raped her at a party at her home. In May 2019, she said local teenager Jordan Trengove, whose family had lived in Barrow for generations, assaulted her in March of the same year, threatened her with a knife and hit her with a shower head in May. , accused her of rape. A week later, she filed a third false rape charge against Trengove, who was arrested and detained for five weeks.
In the months that followed, Ms. Williams launched an onslaught of lies targeting the Asian community, starting with accusing local character Moe (nicknamed “Rummy”) of grooming her since she was 12 years old.
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She went on to tell police she had been trafficked to Blackpool. Police later discovered that her story didn’t add up. She claimed that she was driven to another location and forced to perform sex acts, but police discovered that she had booked a hotel room on her own two days in advance and had been staying there the entire time. Other than two visits to local shops to buy sweets. It was all recorded on CCTV. After further (and final) allegations, Williams was arrested and Trengove was eventually released.
Trengove struggled to get back on his feet and, oddly enough, that’s where Tommy Robinson enters the story. “[Trengove]rebuilt Ellie’s life with his girlfriend, who was with him at the time of the Facebook post,” Barr said.
“It means he was one of the people named alongside the Asian men she accused, and as a result found himself a new target. He was helpless. At a loss, his girlfriend saw Tommy Robinson being interviewed about these issues and contacted him to tell him what was going on at Barrow. I said, “Okay, I’ll go.”
Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) promoted himself as a journalist and believed Mr Trengove and met him. Mr Mo also invited Robinson to his home to speak in person, convinced that he was the only person the locals believed could help him. This incident took over Mo’s life. Every day he was threatened and abused. People appeared outside his house. Worried that Robinson would become violent, Mo shaved his head because he “wanted to look like a thug.”
“He’s a racist,” Moe told the documentary makers. “But he’s a powerful man. People listen to Tommy Robinson a lot. People don’t believe in the mainstream media, they don’t believe in the police, so I didn’t want to say it, but I needed to talk to him. ” The far-right Islamophobes on the couch seemed to be the only way to get the truth out.
“It’s like (Ellie) barged into an open door,” Barr said. And when you combine both of these things, it’s the perfect recipe for making a lie be believed. ”
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In Rotherham, Telford and even nearby Blackpool, where Charlene Downes disappeared some 22 years ago, authorities have failed to take action to protect vulnerable children who are being sexually abused and exploited. This completely laid the foundation for Williams’ victimhood as another young, neglected woman. . This is a cruel and dangerous lie, armed with the very real problem of gang raiding in Britain and the torture endured by real victims. And in the context of the rise of far-right politics, post-Brexit nationalism and racism, that weapon has woven a complex web, Barr said. Facts are only true if you are on the same side.
“When your opponent is telling you a fact, your immediate reaction is, ‘Well, that’s not true,'” he says. “And the enemy could be the police, the media, the far right, women, Islam. You get stuck in a hole where you only believe those who share your experience, and everyone else is your enemy. Once it happens, there’s little you can do to stop it, and no matter what you do, it gets worse.”
Williams served two years in prison for repeated malicious accusations. The court that tried her found there was insufficient evidence of mental distress that might have driven her to commit the crime. We’ll probably never know why she did it.
Now she is out of prison, but the destruction she left behind means some of her victims may never feel free. Since she became a far-right extremist cause celebrity, many of the Asian men still living in Barrow continue to suffer abuse. Some lost their businesses and felt forced to leave town.
Now, the conditions are ripe for the further expansion of the “post-truth era.” Despite the introduction of the Online Safety Act in 2023, which will “make it a crime to spread false and harmful information online,” Mark Zuckerberg said this week that Meta has announced the end of responsible fact-checking. A society where “alternative facts” could quickly become the norm is definitely a frightening prospect.
“Making this documentary made me realize how fragile the situation was at the time, partly due to the impact of COVID-19 and partly due to previous grooming scandals. “The cracks started to appear,” Barr said. “If anything, I think it’s more fragile now. We’re seeing these kinds of rifts pop up in other parts of the country for a variety of reasons; are all connected.
“There are very deep-seated issues at the root of it, such as social exclusion, poverty and disenfranchisement, but there is still a creeping sense that there are many cracks running beneath the surface, and that it will not take long to open them. It doesn’t cost.”
‘Accused: The Fake Grooming Scandal’ is available to stream on Channel 4
