at 10pm, jane hill will be here with a full round—up of the day's news. first, the big cases: the lie that destroyed a town. i haven't come across a case like this in 20 years of prosecuting. she said she'd been being abused and trafficked across the north of england for sex. everyone really believed her. death threats were made - against local restaurant owners. the town was a step away from anarchy, really. the keyboard warriors are out, the level of racism. i was trialled on social media.

there was about six, eight police officersl at the bottom of my bed. it has been very difficult. very, very difficult. barrow is a peninsula in south cumbria, a long way away from most other places. it is isolated, but because of that, it's a really strong and tight community. it did used to have a good name for itself with the shipbuilding, and then everything's disappearing in barrow. there's the bad areas, and there's good areas. it's a beautiful town. i've made amazing mates here. i've made an amazing life here. you will walk down the street, - and you will see someone you know.

everyone knew each other, or if you didn't know each other, you'd have heard of them. so when a story like this breaks, everybody�*s notjust got an opinion on it, everybody knows someone involved in it as well. in the spring of 2020, a 19—year—old barrow girl called ellie williams published a harrowing facebook post that would send shockwaves through her community. they put lit petrol rags and threatening letters through my letterbox. tried to drown me, strangled me. they've abused me in every way possible. this has been years of me being trafficked to places across manchester, yorkshire, lancashire and cumbria. these are mostly pakistani men, and some are business—owners. i remember first seeing everything on social media, the post that she put on and all the bruising, etc. and of course it's just heartbreaking. and when you see that, you want to get some kind ofjustice.

a woman from barrow claimed - on facebook that she was the victim of grooming gangs. she said she'd been being abused and trafficked across the north of england for sex for years. we had some really serious allegations of grooming, human trafficking, which were getting taken extremely seriously by the force. it was like a bomb dropping. it really upset people. it really upset me when i first saw it, because, of course, you think how on earth is this going on? and people haven't known about it. it felt like one of ours had been treated so badly and let down by everybody. everyone was very supportive of her cause and her family's cause. there was a lot. yeah. a lot of people. i would've said most of them. every window you walked past, on every street, there was either

an elephant logo or a justice for ellie logo. a lot of people gathered in _ hollywood park, and then they would just drive in round l barrow as a convoy. there were lots of demonstrations and people voicing their opinions. rallies organised. you know, as a person walking out of your house and seeing that nobody actually knew the truth. don'tjudge what you say on facebook to be true. have an open mind. do not make assumptions. follow the evidence. little did the public know that investigators already had reason to believe that ellie williams might be lying and that she'd been making allegations about multiple men since 2017. allegations going back to when she was 12 years old. people seem to think we knew more about the case than the investigators and the police. the keyboard warriors are out, people getting are accused

who had nothing to do with the case whatsoever. fleeing their homes, hate crimes, the level of racism, it was just a disgusting state of affairs. the town was a step away from anarchy, really. shops got smashed up, - and everything, like, was bad. blaming a pakistani, muslim and asian, a grooming gang tojust fuel these lies. everyone really believed her. if we can't talk about it, something's going to fill the vacuum. itjust felt like a pressure—cooker building and building and building. and this is what the far—right took advantage of. i'm nazir afzal, and i'm the former chief crown prosecutor. and i led nationally on tackling child sexual abuse and violence against women and girls, and particularly what we call street grooming or what you may call so—called grooming gangs because of the nature of the crime, the ethnicity of the perpetrators being disproportionately british,

pakistani or british, asian and the far—right have decided to focus on it. they say they are there to support the victims or expose perpetrators. the reality is they're really interested in their own agenda. i found that in rochdale, where they were outside of court every day. and then at one point, in fact, they tried to destroy the case by damaging and attacking a defence team which came that close to the case being chopped down. we would never have been able to prosecute that case, and everything else that flowed from it wouldn't have happened. the vast majority of british—asians detest the perpetrators. they don't want anything to do with these people. they want them brought to justice. local indian restaurants were targeted on social media. they soon found themselves facing vandalism and harassment to protect their safety, we've interviewed them anonymously. the focus point was it was an asian grooming gang. there's not many asian people here. you're going to be targeted. people thought that you were part of a grooming ring, basically, a massive conspiracy. yes. did you feel safe here? i'll be honest, no. not at all.

you had the window... window smashed twice, all caught on camera and then come in and smashing the windows with bricks. so, the police told you to take pictures of all these? all these? yeah. this isjust from one evening. one evening? yeah. it's like this in the shop. that's where i was. a lot of racist remarks as well, static and abusive phone calls saying that we're going to shoot everyone within the shop, rape my wife in front my children, and then kill my kids. police came and basically said, "you need to close for your own safety." tried and guilty by social media. i would say definitely it does affect you. it does take its toll on you. before her facebook post, ellie williams had already accused multiple men of rape. one of those was 18—year—old jordan trengove. his life would change

forever after a night out with ellie in 2019. at that time, i wanted to go and try for an apprenticeship in the yard, in the shipbuilding yard. yeah, i was just in the process of, like, getting everything for my application. i was planning my birthday and stuff like that with my mate. i was just living my life. live a life that a normal person should do. me and two friends went out, and we put on our snapchat story that we were out. ellie replied to it on the snapchat story saying, "can i come out with you? i've got no one to go out with." and just being nice, like wanted a mate, a friend and stuff like that. we just said, yeah. she turned up, and from then it was we just carried

on with our night out. little did we know it was all part of her wicked little plan. later that night, jordan says he and ellie separated after his friend got into a fight. he later went back to a local nightclub to find her. i was supposed to meet ellie back in town where she used to work. and when i got back, she was gone. and i said to them, the staff, where she worked, because i knew they were friends, i said, like, "do you know where ellie is?" and they said, "yeah, she's gone home. she's being sick." so i went out and continued my own night. and then obviously i went home with a completely different female. a week later, jordan was arrested on suspicion of rape. i was just asleep in my bed, and ijust woke up and it was just about six, eight police officers at the bottom of my bed. and they're saying of my girlfriend.

and i was like, i don't have a girlfriend. what she's going on about? "ellie williams." and that was like that was worse. you know, no one wants to be arrested for rape. when i got to the police station and they started explaining what was going on, she was trying to say i raped her on this night out. how can someone actually do this to someone? the evidence is that i haven't done anything. i said to them, "there'll be cctv." you know, there's pictures on my phone. they were trying to listen to her. i was confused. i said to my mum, like, "if i go to prison, i'm not going to be coming out alive and coming out in a box." i go in there as a rapist, you know, it's not going to go down well. and if you go in on a sex offence in prison, you're bound to get some sort

of damage put towards you. the police went on to chargejordan with rape. he spent ten weeks in custody surrounded by convicted sex offenders. it was making me quite suicidal because i was just ripped away from my family for no reason at all. i was in a cell with an actual convicted paedophile. he told me he pleaded guilty to sending images to an eight—year—old kid. you do not want to be on that wing at all. this man is a local businessman, well known in barrow as mo rami, but he barely knew ellie williams. she, though, accused him of grooming and trafficking her. we had really serious allegations of human trafficking, grooming, which the public would expect us to be addressing in the strongest terms possible. i got arrested in 2019. it was by the police on the promenade. j i actually laughed when they said human trafficking. _ itjust did... it wasjust like, "i'm dreaming." i'm not doing anything. i've got nothing to worry about. you're handcuffed. you feel the cold cuffs. and you're stood on the street- for ten minutes before you were put into a van or a car. yeah.

and for people to see, - then it did become very real. and ijust thought, bizarre. well, we also had some accounts of ms williams having been trafficked to amsterdam and trafficked before in terms of amsterdam. initially, she said she'd been with her sister and sister's boyfriend, and she said that she felt like a gooseberry. and then she'd gone and met mr ramzan and worked in a brothel while she's in amsterdam. but how could somebody go to this degree of lying? - it's like it's ridiculous. it's all put together. and you've just thrown my name in the mix. l for what reason? it's absolutely crazy. it'sjust doesn't make sense. they had the tag on me. i was on curfew from 7pm—7am. i feel disgusted that myj name is being tarnished with something like that.

i'm an innocent man being persecuted. . i tried to end my life quite a few times because of it. in prison. not in prison? no. but when i come out of prison, i did. jordan was eventually released from prison after the police were able to prove that he wasn't with ellie. at the time, she claimed to have been raped. i've had "rapist" put my house, my windows smashed. but first, i didn't want to have a bond with my son, you know, because i didn't want him growing up with, you know, your dad's a rapist, this, that and the other. it wasn't how a normal 18—year—old should have lived the life, being accused of stuff like that. it's a pretty shocking time.

but, mrtrengrove, undergod, i mean, nobody can begin to imagine getting remanded in custody for something you haven't done to begin with, but then to be put on a sex offenders wing and everything that entails. certainly my heart goes out to him and everything that he's been through. obviously, the person responsible for that is eleanor williams. i've never had a written apology of the police or anything like that. so you want an apology from the police? i would like some sort of apology here, because at the end of the day, it's notjust ellie that ruined my life. it's them as well. it's been hell. it has been actually a living hell. i've been a popular person of many businesses in this town. _ i used to go on my normal walks. people won't look at me. people were just, like, j distancing themselves. we had our rental— properties smashed in town. we had our ice cream i van smashed, smashed. the windscreen out on the street. people would shout out to me, paedo.

but i was tried on social media. i was guilty. i was guilty for 3.5 years. and the amount of abuse is obvious. i can show you a message request. i've got over 500 difficult, difficult, sick children - going through there. a 15—year—old at the time was working on the van. i a good old lady walked over to a 15—year—old lad filming him. - calling him a paedophile and he's not. _ "i'm15" and she goes, "i don't care. - you're all the same. you're all paedophiles."

after examining the evidence, police were able to establish that ellie's allegations against mo rami were false. mr ramzan assisted the investigation throughout and provided his banking records, and we were able to prove at the time that he was allegedly trafficking ms williams in amsterdam, he was actually buying things and being queued was there in barrow—in—furness. when we got evidence from a sister and the sister's boyfriend, you said that she hadn't been out of their sight during the time she was there with them. that then changed to the fact that she said she'd sneaked out of a hotel room to go and work in a brothel. police found that ellie had created fake social media accounts and altered contacts on her phone to give the impression that she was being contacted and targeted online. ms williams had gone through an elaborate set of plans that she'd put in motion using fictitious people and live people by using snapchat, which automatically deleted by taking

screenshots she was alleging from traffickers, by attributing names to people that it wasn't. it wasn't that person. mr ramzan was a prime example. the police discovered that ellie was even writing some of those messages to herself and covering her tracks. but some of them were so over the top, they raised suspicions. well, some of the messages on that case were overwhelming and messages of a tone that i had never witnessed in my 20 years of prosecuting. we work closely with the police, and of course, they were thoroughly investigated. and it transpired that the provenance of those messages was not as we originally thought. cctv also proved a crucial part of the investigation. ms williams was saying about things that happened going back to when she was 12 years old. so i chose to focus on the most recent events reported, which was a trip to blackpool, where she reported that she'd been to for what she called sex parties, where she'd been abused and sold for money. she'd actually booked herself into a hotel. you can see ms williams booking into the hotel, and you can see her going off into a room. and we found that she'd been out twice out of that room in the night. 0nce to get some sweets at a shop.

0nce to buy a pot of noodle. the rest of the time, it would appear she'd been in her room listening to podcasts. we found she hadn't been to any parties anywhere. by the time ellie's facebook post, which captivated the community and spread around the world, was posted, the police had already established that she was lying. they then turned their attention to the story she posted online and the shocking images she posted with it. said she was found in a field after she'd been reported missing. she gave an account of being raped by a number of asian men at a house in barrow—in—furness. i sent a search team into the field where she'd been found and a hammer was recovered very close by to where she was found, which was found to be bloodstained. and later forensic testing showed

that it was her dna and her blood etched on the hammer. we then started making inquiries about that type of hammer, and when we made inquiries at tesco in barrow, we found that ms williams was on cctv actually purchasing the identical hammer some days earlier prior to this incident. it transpired that she'd used the hammer to inflict the injuries in her photos on herself. the photos that fooled so many. it became obvious that she was definitely telling lies. and that was at the point when i had to make a decision to arrest her and put these lies to her and get an account. safeguarding's been at the top of our agenda right from the very outset and right till the end. i felt that the only way that we were going to stop her committing further offences, harming herself further, was to get her charged and remanded in custody.

i haven't come across a case like this in 20 years of prosecuting. i was the reviewing lawyer in this matter, and i authorised the police to charge ms williams with the counts that she faced. ellie was charged with perverting the course ofjustice. what it means is that you have done something that's jeopardised - somebody else's liberty . because of the allegations that you made, which i you knew to be untrue. that is a really heinous thing l to do, and that's why the state has to prosecute these cases. what was it in this case that made you think that that bar had been exceeded ? well, there were lies that were told, repeated lies. and the men the lies were told against had suffered immensely. the evidence was so overwhelming that we had no other option other than to prosecute.

cumbrian police, i commend them and i commended them _ at the time. they carried out a veryl thorough investigation. they didn't simply say, "i don't believe you." l let's prove or not. prove what you said. and they they found all the evidence that demonstrated to a jury - that she was lying. and that's a credit to them. in january 2023, eleanor williams was found guilty of perverting the course of justice. it wasjust a big relief, like, we've cleared ourselves, you know, a lot of smiles out there. quite a lot of smiles. we've done it. it's been all exposed. now we've finally got our justice, and we've proved that we've done nothing wrong. the shop's only around the corner. i wouldn't walk there on my own, but now i feel like i could do that. this verdict has turned me into a completely different person already. i have a completely different outlook on life now. it's just mad how one day can change my life.

eleanor williams, please stand up. in march 2023, eleanor williams was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison. the harm of this offending extends to an undermining of public confidence in the criminal justice system. we are aware that sex trafficking of young females does occur. there is a risk that genuine victims will, as a result of this defendant's actions, feel deterred from reporting it. ellie williams had written a letter to the judge. in it, she said she was sorry, saying, "i know i've done wrong over some of this," but she doesn't admit she was guilty. i wasjust expecting a longer prison sentence for ellie. - and, you know, ithink the judge has been really fair in taking _ into account her age and abilities.

and it's really difficult to accept that she is responsible - for all the things that she said. but in the eyes of the law, i've got to accept that. - and i should know there's an appeal l going in, so we'lljust have to waitl and see what happens from that. on a daily basis, ideal with genuine survivors of rape and serious sexual offences, and i would hate for this case to be a deterrent to genuine victims to come forward. we would never prosecute an individual who came forward, for example, where there were inconsistencies in the evidence or, for example, where genuine complainants of rape withdrew support. so i would urge those people to come forward. there will be occasions, rare occasions like the one we have here, where somebody simply makes it all up. but it has to be said, this is rare. now, when we did some research, when i was in the prosecution service ten years ago now, we found that only one in 300 cases of sexual offences were lies. we could prove, provable lies.

it is very, very difficult for a victim to come i forward and to be believed. my name is sammy woodhouse, and i've been an activist - for about ten years now. i was groomed mentally, physically and sexually . as a 14—year—old child. and i had a child - from that exploitation. being groomed and raped, exploited, abused, - it's totally life—changing. it's affected me in so many different ways — education, friendships, relationships, mental health. _ it just feels for me like every single day you have to wake i up and have to fight - for something and not attack, it's just to be able _ to get out of that bed and just | to be able to put on that smilej and just to be able to function. when you come forward and you go |through that process of, you know, the investigation, the court case, it's daunting. - it's something that i'll neverl forget for the rest of my life.

on top of that, when you see a case like this and to see a nation- just completely switch on somebody, i i think it's going to put off a lot. of people from coming forward. it's not very often that someone l will come forward and lie about it. of course, there are some rare - cases, but i think what's important is that we focus on the people that are telling the truth. _ i think ellie williams has - definitely been through something in herlife. i think it needs to i be looked at again, but what's not ok is lying about other people. - you can't go around making allegations like that up. - it can completely i ruin someone's life. she's destroyed and took so much light of my life away from me, and i'll never, ever forget what she did. and i'll neverforgive her. i want to know why. i would love to know why me. it has been very difficult. very, very difficult. i do hope nobody goes through this. has it changed you as a person?

yes, it has. you're not the people that love you, your family, your brothers, your sisters, your husband, your wife. i'm scared of people now. i've lost trust in humanity in a sense, to be honest with you, having to go through through this. and i'm sure it's not going to stay like this because now everything's coming out and now you can start... i'm getting my life back now.

hello there. spring daffodils in full bloom now right across the country, but what we could do with is some spring—like weather. well, for some, we had that today. in fact, in north—east england it was a mild and often quite sunny day as depicted by this weather watcher in northumberland. it was a different story, though, elsewhere. we did have some sharp thundery downpours, a rainbow in the sky across falkirk with some threatening—looking skies here. now, if we take a look back at the cloud and the rain radar from recent hours, you can see just how widespread those showers have been today, but at the same time, there's also been some sunny spells as well. and that's the story as we go through the night, tonight and into tomorrow with low pressure anchored out to the west, feeding in plenty of showers from the west through the night. so, we keep quite a lot of cloud around. that's going to prevent those temperatures from falling too far, but it does mean a messy mixture of showers as we go through the night. those temperatures will hold up at around 5—9 degrees for most. we start off tomorrow on a rather

cloudy note for many, a mild note and once again it's going to be a case of sunny spells and scattered showers. light winds as well on saturday, so i suspect if you catch a shower, they could linger for quite some time. they should be fairly interspersed. top temperatures around 111—15 degrees not out of the question, but, yes, some of those showers once again could be heavy and thundery. more persistent rain into northern ireland and western scotland by the latter stages of the afternoon. here we'll look at around 9—10 degrees, but noticeably colder in the northern isles. and as that area of low pressure gradually starts to ease away, the winds will pick up through the evening and overnight and swing back round to a northerly. and that means on the back edge, we could see a little bit of snow across the northern isles. temperatures to greet us first thing on sunday morning, a little bit lower. so, a chillier start, but hopefully a crystal clear, blue sky, sunshine morning on sunday. very nice indeed. gradually, we'll see cloud

developing out to the west as rain will start to push in by the end of the afternoon. but not a bad mothering sunday in prospect. temperatures generally between 8—111 degrees, once again a little bit cooler in the northern isles. so, just to sum up this weekend, saturday will be a case of sunny spells and scattered showers, better on sunday.

tonight at ten — an arrest warrant is issued by the international criminal court for russia's leader, vladimir putin. the court accuses president putin of war crimes since his invasion of ukraine — including the deportation of children to russia. translation: this is a historic decision from which historical i responsibility will begin. the head of the terrorist state and another russian official have become suspects in a war crime. moscow says it doesn't recognise the court. we'll ask what happens next. also tonight... racist, sexist and homophobic — the metropolitan police is expected to be highly criticised in a damning new report.

is your summer holiday in jeopardy? as passport workers prepare to strike, unions say it