Unreliable Witness: Who is Ellie Williams?
This Is Why
Sky News
4.0 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2024
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Social media rumours lead to attacks on Asian men and businesses in her hometown of Barrow-in-Furness. But when she's arrested for perverting the course of justice, things really explode and there are protest rallies and claims of a cover-up.
At her trial, the prosecution say she lied, faked text messages and even caused the catalogue of injuries to herself.
In season 6 of StoryCast, Sky News' Jason Farrell and Liz Lane, who reported on the case at the time, return to Barrow to investigate what could have led her to make these claims and if, underneath it all, there is some other truth buried among the lies.
With access to her family, police investigators and those most impacted by her allegations, we ask: Is Ellie Williams a villain - or a victim of something else? And what happened after the trial - once all the media attention died down and new allegations began to emerge?
This is episode one of Unreliable Witness. For the full season, follow Unreliable Witness wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Trust in politics is broken, so can we get UK politics working again? |
| 0:06.1 | That was the last time we were happy. |
| 0:07.7 | 2012. |
| 0:08.5 | I'm Beth Rigby Sky's political editor. |
| 0:11.0 | Join me every week with Labour's Jess Phillips and Conservative peer Ruth Davidson for some electoral dysfunction. |
| 0:18.7 | This idea of nuance is completely left politics. |
| 0:21.1 | Together we'll focus on the policies that could deliver political satisfaction. |
| 0:26.5 | Follow electoral dysfunction wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:31.5 | Hi everyone, it's Leah here. This time on the Daily, we're sharing something else from the Sky News podcast team. |
| 0:38.7 | It's the first episode of our new investigative series called Unreliable Witness. |
| 0:44.1 | You might remember some of the story. |
| 0:46.4 | Ellie Williams is a young woman from Barrow in Cumbria. |
| 0:49.7 | She claimed she'd been trafficked by an Asian grooming gang. |
| 0:53.1 | Her allegations went viral on social media, |
| 0:56.2 | causing protests and racist attacks in the town. But later, she was jailed for lying about it. |
| 1:03.5 | With close access to the people at the heart of the case, our home editor, Jason Farrell, |
| 1:08.4 | and producer Liz Lane, delve back into the story. They explore the |
| 1:12.6 | unanswered questions with new revelations trying to work out if there's some other secret beneath |
| 1:17.9 | the lies. Here's episode one. For all the episodes follow Sky News storycast. You'll find the |
| 1:24.3 | Unreliable Witness series there. Before we begin, a warning this episode of Unreliable Witness |
| 1:31.6 | contains descriptions of violence and abuse. |
| 1:35.2 | Episode 1. Who is Ellie Williams? |
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