Channel 4’s newest true crime documentary Accused: The Fake Grooming Scandal focuses on the the case of Ellie Williams – the woman who lied about being raped, beaten, tortured and trafficked by a group of Asian men.
Meanwhile, the real power behind the Trump throne, the world’s wealthiest genius/idiot (delete according to preference) Elon Musk, has been sticking his nose into the politics of European countries – a subject about which he appears to know as much as my dog knows about quantum physics.
As well as urging the German people to vote for the extreme right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the upcoming elections and calling for the release of racist thug Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), who was jailed for contempt of court after repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee, Musk wants King Charles to dissolve parliament and order a new general election, neither of which the monarch is empowered to do.
He also wants to see Prime Minister Keir Starmer thrown in prison. Musk claims – wrongly, naturally – that Starmer failed to prosecute grooming gangs while director of public prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.
Musk may be an ignoramus whose influence on the feeble-minded and easily duped is deeply depressing, but at least his latest outpouring of drivel gives increased pertinence to the docuseries Accused: The Fake Grooming Scandal (Channel 4, Tuesday, 9pm and 10pm, and Wednesday, 10pm, Jan 7-8; also streaming at Channel4.com).
It’s harrowing to hear Rammy, his wife Nicola and son Harry describe how their lives were made hell
The three-parter focuses in detail on the case of Ellie Williams. In 2019, Williams, from the town of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, made multiple allegations that she’d been raped, beaten, tortured and trafficked by a group of Asian men.
Williams, who was 19 at the time, posted a photo of herself bloodied and bruised, her right eye swollen shut, on Facebook. She urged others to share it. “People need to know about this local and very real issue,” she wrote.
Share they did. The post quickly went viral, not just locally, but throughout the UK and even abroad. The racist mob mentality kicked in. Inevitably, Tommy Robinson got involved.
Williams went on to describe the men as “mostly Pakistani”, some of whom were “businessmen”.
She saved the outraged mob the trouble of finding out who they were by thoughtfully sharing some names, including local ice-cream seller Mohammed Ramzan, known to all as Mo Rammy, who she claimed was the leader of the group.
It’s harrowing to hear Rammy, his wife Nicola and son Harry describe how their lives were made hell: death threats, damage to their property, being called racist names and spat at in the street.
It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that not a word of what Williams said was true. The details of her deception, which included sending fake messages between two phones, have been thoroughly documented by the media.
Williams falsely named Mo Rammy as one of her abusers. Photo: Channel 4
The injuries, as well as others including slash marks to her body that she displayed in subsequent posts, were all self-inflicted, in some cases using a hammer she’d bought, which was found at the scene of one of the “attacks”.
The purchase had been captured on in-store CCTV.
At her trial in 2020, Williams was found guilty of perverting the course of justice and sentenced to eight-and-a-half years. She’ll be eligible for parole in 2027.
By the time of the fateful Facebook post, Cumbrian police had already spent a year investigating multiple earlier allegations by Williams, including one against a white teenager called Jordan Trengove, who Williams claimed had threatened her with a knife, beaten her with a shower head and raped her.
He was arrested, released on bail and later rearrested after Williams made a fresh allegation against him.
Trengove spent 73 days in prison on remand (for his own safety, he was placed in a wing with convicted sex offenders), before being released when Williams decided to withdraw the allegations.
Despite featuring the usual trappings of the true-crime genre, the series is primarily an examination of human behaviour at its basest, ugliest and most toxically stupid.
Accused: The Fake Grooming Scandal airs on Channel 4, Tuesday, 9pm and 10pm, and Wednesday, 10pm, Jan 7-8; also streaming at Channel4.com
