A girl who falsely claimed she was drugged, raped and compelled to work as a prostitute was sentenced Tuesday to greater than eight years imprisonment in a case that fueled racial tensions in Britain.

Eleanor Williams, 22, stated on Facebook in May 2020 — in a put up shared greater than 100,000 occasions — that she had been crushed, abused and trafficked by south Asian males, stoking months of anger, worry and acts of vandalism in her hometown of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. Williams was convicted by a jury in Preston Crown Court in January of acts tending and supposed to pervert the course of justice. At the time of the Facebook put up, police suspected Williams’s wild allegations of violent rapes and sexual trafficking abroad had been fabricated and that she had crushed herself with a hammer to help her claims.

Judge Robert Altham stated he could not clarify Williams’ motivation, however stated the accusations had been a “complete fiction” that capitalized on actual situations by which males — typically of south Asian descent — had exploited teenage women by grooming them first with items, booze and medicines earlier than abusing them. “I’m sure she chose to lie about Asian men because she was modeling her lies on other cases of national prominence,” Altham stated. ”She regarded the prospects of being believed as larger if she based mostly them on instances already within the public consciousness.” Three of the accused males instructed authorities they tried to take their very own lives whereas underneath suspicion.

Williams had claimed that Mohammed Ramzan, a enterprise proprietor, had groomed her from the age of 12 and took her to Amsterdam the place she was compelled to have intercourse for cash and bought her at public sale. Police later found that when Williams was within the Netherlands, Ramzan’s financial institution card was getting used again dwelling in Barrow. Her claims that he took her to Blackpool, threatened to kill her and the place she was brutally raped by a number of males collapsed when video confirmed she was there alone and had watched YouTube in her resort room, Altham stated. Ramzan stated he acquired numerous loss of life threats from all over the world on social media. He was in such despair that he tried to kill himself in entrance of his household, had his automobile home windows smashed and his once-successful companies had been ruined, Altham stated.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse workers and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)