A woman falsely alleged that she had been sold into sexual slavery abroad by a man who was shopping in B&Q at the time.
Eleanor Williams was today found guilty of falsely and “maliciously” accusing a group of men of rape and and then causing injuries to herself with a hammer to support the invented claims.
Williams, 22, from Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, was convicted at Preston crown court after an 11-week trial, in what the Crown Prosecution Service said was a “very rare” case.
Prosecutors compared Williams’ fabricated allegations in court to the plot of the film Taken, in which Liam Neeson plays a father trying to free his daughter from sexual slavery.
In one of Williams’ several claims, she told police that she had been groomed from the age of 12 and trafficked to work in brothels in Amsterdam. Prosecutors told the jury that the man she claimed had trafficked her was at the time using his bank card at B&Q’s store in Barrow-in-Furness.
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Williams was convicted of seven counts of making false allegations of sexual abuse, violence and rape against a variety of men, including a group of Asians who she claimed were grooming her. At an earlier hearing she had admitted another offence of intending to pervert the course of justice. She will be sentenced on March 14.
One of the accused men was remanded to prison for more than two months as a result of her accusations.
During the trial, jurors were told that Williams produced fabricated evidence to support her claims, including fake Snapchat accounts and messages.
She knew several of the men that she implicated. Wendy Lloyd, the senior crown prosecutor in the case, said that Williams had “maliciously and persistently made false accusations against several men who had the misfortune of being acquainted with her”.
The prosecutors added that Williams “knew what she was doing each time and made these false allegations intending that these men would be investigated, potentially prosecuted or even imprisoned as a result of her actions”.
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Lloyd said that “the impact on those falsely accused has been devastating and this conviction now fully exonerates the men who she accused of serious sexual abuse”.
The court had been told that in 2019 Williams fabricated evidence to suggest she had been drugged and raped. Police arrested a man in connection with her allegations but found no evidence to support the claims and established that the Snapchat account information she had given did not exist.
Williams went on to allege that a second man had raped and assaulted her on three separate occasions. She produced messages purporting to be confessions from the man. An investigation revealed that she had created a false Snapchat account and sent messages to herself.
Williams also told police that she had been in a sexual relationship with a different man since she was about 12. She claimed that he and others had trafficked her to various destinations in the UK and abroad, including to Ibiza and Amsterdam, where she was repeatedly sexually exploited. Those claims were found to be invented as investigators discovered that Williams had again fabricated Snapchat messages.
In another account, Williams told officers that she had been taken to the Blackpool area, where she was subjected to violence and death threats and forced to have sex with eight men.
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Investigators found that she had booked herself into a Blackpool hotel and CCTV images confirmed that she stayed there, apart from a brief walk to a nearby shop. Police determined that her entire account was fabricated.
In 2020, police officers located Williams after concerns were raised for her safety. She was found with numerous injuries and told police that three men had attacked her with a knife and she had been raped. A hammer was recovered that had Williams’ DNA. A pathologist confirmed that her injuries had not been caused by a knife but were consistent with being self-inflicted with a hammer.
After the verdict, Lloyd said that “false accusations of this kind are very rare. This has been an unusual case and it is important for victims of rape or sexual assault to understand that they should never fear coming forward to report the crime to police.”
Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Stalker, of Cumbria Police, said Williams’ offences were “far from victimless crimes”.
He said: “Williams had produced compelling evidence when reporting her abuse, whilst her posts on Facebook caused uproar in the community, increased community tensions and negatively impacted trust in the police.”