Fake sex abuse claims get British woman 8.5 year prison term

By BRIAN MELLEY
yesterday

Cumbria Police undated handout photo of Eleanor Williams. A 22-year-old woman has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years after falsely claiming to have been the victim of an Asian grooming gang. Eleanor Williams, of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, was sentenced at Preston Crown Court on Tuesday, March 14, 2023 after making a series of false rape allegations. In a Facebook post in May 2020, which was shared more than 100,000 times, she described being beaten, abused and trafficked by Asian men. (Cumbria Police via AP)

LONDON (AP) — A woman who falsely claimed she was drugged, raped and forced to work as a prostitute was sentenced Tuesday to more than eight years imprisonment in a case that fueled racial tensions in Britain.

Eleanor Williams, 22, said on Facebook in May 2020 — in a post shared more than 100,000 times — that she had been beaten, abused and trafficked by south Asian men, stoking months of anger, fear 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 intended to pervert the course of justice.

At the time of the Facebook post, police suspected Williams’s wild allegations of violent rapes and sexual trafficking overseas had been fabricated and that she had beaten herself with a hammer to support her claims.

[...]