Eleanor Williams: Barrow sex trafficking claims 'a pack of lies'

A woman who claimed Asian men groomed her for an international sex trafficking ring told a "pack of lies", a court has heard.

Eleanor Williams, of Barrow in Cumbria, alleged she was taken to Amsterdam to work in a brothel and then sold at auction for 25,000 euros (£22,000).

However, Preston Crown Court heard the man said to have taken her abroad was actually in Barrow buying petrol.

Miss Williams, 21, denies seven counts of perverting the course of justice.

Her legal team said all but one of her allegations were true.

Jonathan Sandiford KC said the defendant claimed Mohammed Ramzan, a Barrow business owner known as Rammi, began a sexual relationship with her when she was 12 or 13 and groomed her to have sex with other men.

She alleged in 2018 Mr Ramzan masterminded the trip to Amsterdam and then sold her at auction before she was allowed to return home when the buyer could not make the payment.

The court heard when police made inquiries into Mr Ramzan's whereabouts at the time of the alleged trip, they discovered a "more mundane" story.

Mr Sandiford said: "They found his phone did not leave Barrow on those few days.

"They looked at his bank cards and in fact, instead of acting as an international human trafficker in Amsterdam, he was buying things in B&Q Barrow and filling his car with petrol in Asda."

In July 2019, the court heard, Miss Williams reported a "horrific account" of a trip to Blackpool in which she claimed Mr Ramzan was violent and threatened to throw her in the sea, telling her she faced a test to see if she could be trusted not to go to police.

Officers made inquiries after she told them she had been "pimped out" around four addresses in Blackpool and made to have sex with eight men, the jury was told.

Mr Sandiford said: "What police found was the detailed account that the defendant had given was a pack of lies from first to last."

He said she had travelled to Blackpool alone and stayed at a hotel, where she bought a Pot Noodle and chocolate from a nearby shop then stayed in her room watching YouTube on her phone.

Miss Williams was also said to have fabricated and manipulated messages and social media accounts.

The court heard a man called Liam Wood, who lived in Essex and worked in Tesco, was friends with her on messaging app Snapchat and used the nickname Shaggy because his friends said he looked like the character from children's cartoon Scooby-Doo.

Mr Sandiford said Miss Williams created a contact in her phone for his Snapchat username, but indicated he was involved in trafficking her.

Mr Sandiford said: "By the time she had finished with Liam Wood, he was no longer that young man working in Tesco.

"He was Shaggy Wood, an Asian male who was a drug dealer, a rapist, a ruthless trafficker of girls and young women and someone who, with Mohammed Ramzan according to this defendant, had been violent to her."

In a short statement, defence counsel Louise Blackwell KC told jurors: "All the allegations she's made are true with one exception, Blackpool.

"She was instructed by Mohammed Ramzan to go to Blackpool and instructed by Mr Ramzan and a group of men to lie about what had happened to her there."

The trial, which is expected to last up to 10 weeks, continues.

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