Restaurant owner 'loses 80% of business' due to false Asian grooming gang claims

Eleanor Williams was jailed for eight and a half years today, as ITV News' North of England correspondent Rachel Townsend reports

A restaurant owner in Barrow has claimed that the lies of a woman, who falsely alleged to be the victim of an Asian grooming gang, led to him losing 80% of his business income.

Eleanor Williams, 22, was jailed for eight and a half years on Tuesday, after she was found guilty of eight counts of doing acts tending and intended to pervert the course of justice.

In May 2020, she published pictures claiming to show injuries belonging to her and an account of being groomed, trafficked and beaten, on Facebook, in a post that was shared more than 100,000 times.

The post led to demonstrations in her town of Barrow-in-Furness, with English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson visiting in the wake of the allegations.

Speaking to ITV News under the condition of anonymity, the restaurant owner, who himself is Asian, claimed Williams' lies had left his business in turmoil.

He said Asian people in Barrow were blamed for the false attacks on Williams and exiled by members of the local community.

According to him, he immediately noticed a change in the way that customers behaved towards his business after Williams publicly made the allegations.

He claimed to have received "five to six calls" threatening him and his family on the day Williams posted on Facebook, which soon escalated to death threats.

'Immediately this first night I observe what's going on'

On one occasion a brick was thrown through a window at his father-in-law's house.

He said: "Immediately this first night I observe what's going on and [the] next morning I'm going to the police station in Barrow."

Despite trying to explain to customers that he had nothing to do with the then allegations, footfall at the restaurant began to drop.

He said: "I tried to explain to the customer we are not involved [and] that we don't know what's going on. They said wait and see."

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The restaurant owner estimates that Williams' falsehoods cost his business around 80% of what it would normally make, in the near-three years which have passed since the allegations were first made.

But while the ordeal made him "very worried" for his safety he said he refused to close his business and move away.

"If I close the door and move [from] this town then people believe that I am involved, so this is the main key point for me," he added.

"If I close the restaurant or takeaway people thinking of course this guy is involved, then he move this place or closed this place, then I am not closing I am open every day."

'Police called me. They found it [brick] and someone... broke the window with a brick'

During Williams' sentencing hearing, the court heard how three men tried to take their own lives after she made the false rape allegations, which created an "unprecedented outcry" in Barrow.

Sentencing her, Judge Robert Altham, the Recorder of Preston, in a first for cameras in a north west courtroom, said it was "troubling to say the least she showed no signs of remorse".

Handing her eight and half years in jail, he said the harm she had caused to the men she had accused was high.