Eleanor Williams posted photos of herself with a face covered in bruises, a black eye and a nearly severed finger.
In May 2020, she claimed that a network of abusers in Barrow, England, had done all that to her. The post was shared more than 100.000 times. A campaign called Justice for Ellie was launched, with T-shirts and a purple elephant as its emblem; marches were held across the country, and even Tommy Robinson came to investigate. That summer, hate crimes in the town tripled, and Cumbria Police recorded 151 linked to the case that year alone.
But the men she accused were innocent. Three tried to take their own lives. Oliver Gardner, for example, had only asked her for a light in the street. Jordan Trengove spent 73 days in pretrial detention. Mohammed Ramzan, whom she accused of leading the network, saw his orders fall from 70 or 80 a night to two or three.
Security cameras recorded Eleanor buying the hammer she used to injure herself. In January 2023, a jury found her guilty of nine counts of perverting the course of justice, and the judge described her accusations as “complete fiction”. She was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison, but was released on parole after serving one year and ten months.
