I was dragged off street at 13 & raped on filthy mattress by Asian grooming gang for years…cops accused ME of blackmail

ELLIE Reynolds, 13, was walking along the street when a car pulled up in front of her. Out stepped a man she recognised. He was in a relationship with someone she knew and ran the local Indian takeaway. Everyone called him Sarj. “Shock and fear hit me as, before I really realised what was happening, I was dragged into the back of the car,” she says. Ellie Reynolds, from Barrow, was raped and groomed as a teen Credit: ©Sky UK Ltd Ellie Williams injured herself with a hammer and posted pictures of her injuries on social media, blaming a grooming gang of Asian men – but she was lying Credit: Tim Stewart “I was plied with drugs and taken to a top floor flat. You don’t know what’s going on. You’re out of your head. There were these dirty mattresses on the floor and you’re in that room and you do as you’re told. It was a multiple gang rape of a child.” There followed, what she described as five years of hell as she was gang raped, beaten and tortured by her abusers. Her parents were alarmed by her change in behaviour, her secrecy about where she was going and her weight loss. But she was too frightened of reprisals if she told them or anyone else what was happening. When Ellie eventually summoned the courage to tell police, she was shocked to find that instead of arresting her abusers, they arrested her instead. Now in the three-part Sky documentary Barrow: The Truth Behind the Grooming Lie, Ellie and other women from the Cumbrian town of Barrow-in-Furness talk about their horrific experiences at the hands of gangs of Asian men who groomed and abused them for years. It begins with the notorious case of a fellow Ellie in the town, Ellie Williams, who made a series of lurid claims in 2020 about being raped and beaten by a grooming gang, posting online images of her bruised and cut body. There had already been a public outcry following the exposure of the grooming of young white girls by Asian gangs in Derby, Rotherham, Greater Manchester, Rochdale, Oxford and Telford. Police and authorities were accused of a lack of action due to sensitivity of ethnicity and fears of being branded racist or inciting their communities. Now, determined to crack down, they took Williams’s claims very seriously until she was sensationally exposed as a serial fantasist who lied, fabricated evidence and self-injured herself to frame innocent men. In January 2023 she was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison for perverting the course of justice. Despite this, Williams’s mum Allison and elder sister, Lucy, who give first-time interviews in the documentary, believe that her lies masked some truth. Shah Joman Miah – known as Sarj – plied girls with drugs Credit: Cumbria Police Eleanor Williams framed innocent men Credit: Tim Stewart “I’ve always said that I know Ellie [Williams] has told some lies,” says Allison. “However, she hasn’t lied about it all. There’s truth in some of what she is saying.” But her proven lies and conviction were a blow to vulnerable and abused young girls everywhere who now worried about whether their accusations would be believed. Like Ellie Reynolds. Cumbrian Police were quick to make a statement that there was no evidence of grooming by Asian gangs in Barrow. But several local women were appalled. They knew it was occurring because they had seen or experienced it themselves. Did the focus on proving one young woman a liar lead to denial of a wider grooming problem? Linking many of the women’s stories is Shah Joman Miah, known as Sarj who, along with his two brothers, Jai and Ali, ran the Indian takeaway, Iesha’s. Sarj had been named by Williams as one of her abusers and she had his name in her phone. Twenty months after she was jailed, he was convicted on multiple accounts of sexual abuse, including the rape of young girls. “Grooming is often thought to be older men plying girls with free drinks and drugs and them thinking they are their boyfriends,” says Ellie Reynolds. “But it’s not always like that. You can have an experience like I did where I was taken off the street in 2014 and then it was five years of hell. “There were three men who operated in a gang. They were drugging, torturing and raping me. They got gratification out of scaring me. There’s absolutely nothing that these guys wouldn’t do to put the living fear into you.” When Ellie’s dad, Ian Piper, got a tip-off from a young man as to where his daughter was – a dirty flat in a place called Egerton Court – he informed a police officer, who knocked on the door. Ellie answered. Williams’s mum Allison said there was still some truth in what her daughter said Credit: NNP Allison’s car was torched in a suspected arson attack Credit: NNP “When you are around multiple men who work for your main abuser, you know that you can’t talk, so I gave him a false name,” she says. “He replied, ‘That’s not who you are though, is it, Ellie?’” He brought her out with a frightened Ellie screaming at him. “I was overwhelmed with anger, shouting, ‘Now look what you’ve done’ and I pushed him and was arrested for assaulting a police officer. “They considered me to be a troubled teenager. They didn’t look into why I was in a flat with three grown men. I was never asked ‘Are you okay? Are you safe? Is there anything we should know about?’” In 2018, when she was 17, she told police everything that had happened to her by her abusers. “Less than 24 hours after reporting a gang rape, the police arrived at our house and I was arrested for blackmail.” Just hours before she had reported her abuse, a young man had alleged she had blackmailed him for money by text for relatively small amounts totalling £275. Ellie explained to police that she had been forced to send those messages by her abusers and that she believed he had explicit sexual images of her. A week later, police arrested Sarj and two other men she accused. All three were later released on bail pending further investigation. Sarj had been named by both Ellies as their main abuser. Ruth (not her real name) was the third to report him to police in August 2018, saying she had been in a relationship with him since she was 13 and he was in his 20s. “We met at a bonfire party in 2008,” says Ruth. He seemed so nice and we kept in touch before meeting up again. He used to pick me up from school and we went on drives. It felt exciting. He used to buy me everything – phone, top-ups, beer, fags, hair extensions – anything I wanted. He’d say how much he loved me and I used to think it was romantic.” Ruth and other girls, such as “Laura”, loved hanging out with Sarj, Jai and Ali and other older men – in the back of the takeaway, after it closed. Here, they enjoyed drink, drugs and music and felt like they were being treated like grown-ups. Laura, who was in a relationship with 31-year-old Ali when she was 15, says, “We all thought we were good friends dating men who were brothers. But one night, Ali, Sarj and Jai went outside for a chat. Then Jai came back in and said to me, ‘You know you want me. Nobody needs to find out.’ Williams was eventually jailed for her lies Credit: Tim Stewart Brother Shaha Amran Miah was jailed last year Credit: PA Shaha Alman Miah was also jailed Credit: PA Ellie Reynolds has told her harrowing story in a new documentary Credit: ©Sky UK Ltd “He gripped the back of my shorts and pulled them down. I kept saying no, leave me alone, but he pinned me down. I don’t know how long it went on for. It felt like a long time. I felt sick. I walked back to my grandad’s and I used bleach to scrub myself because I was that disgusted.” Elizabeth Speirs, whose partner worked at the takeaway, says she saw young girls in school uniforms coming in every day to hang out with men from Barrow, Leeds and Bolton. “There were always underage girls there,” says Elizabeth. “I must have seen at least 40, 50 girls in and out at different times.” It wasn’t long before Ruth saw the darker side of her “boyfriend.” “I thought I loved Sarj and then he just started getting controlling,” she says. “He didn’t want me going out with my friends. He had a temper and was scary when he wanted to be, screaming and shouting in my face and pushing me around. Afterwards, he’d be sorry and buy me something and say he wouldn’t do it again, but it kept happening.” When Ruth became pregnant at 16, she decided that she did not want to be around Sarj any more. “He didn’t give up easily,” she says. “He posted a dead rat through my letterbox once.” When Laura ended her relationship with Ali and reported him to police, she says he told her, “Keep your mouth shut. You know what I’m capable of. I will set your house on fire, rape you again, batter you.” But despite her bravery in speaking out the CPS decided there was insufficient evidence to provide a prospect of conviction. Ellie Reynolds also got such a letter in 2019 which added: “Had I charged the suspect in this matter, the defence would have suggested to the jury that you had made this reported rape in an attempt to excuse your criminality in the commission of blackmail.” “It felt degrading and demoralising, just not being believed,” she says. “My theory is that they didn’t want the truth to come out about Barrow, that there were actually grooming gangs in Barrow. They wanted me to be silenced.” In October 2024 the Miah brothers, charged with 62 counts of child sexual abuse between 1996 and 2010 in Barrow and Leeds, were found guilty. During the trial it emerged that they had much younger victims who were of the same ethnicity as them. The youngest was seven. The incidents have cast a shadow over the town of Barrow Credit: Alamy Journalist Liz Lane has investigated the story for a new Sky documentary Credit: ©Sky UK Ltd Sarj, 38 and Jai, 48, were given life sentences. Ali, 47 was sentenced to 14 years. Elizabeth was amongst those who gave evidence, saying how she had been threatened not to talk to the police. Ellie Reynolds, who set up a campaign group called Justice for the Girls to help grooming victims, did not have her allegations included in the charges. A year later, she was acquitted of blackmail. “When I set up Justice for the Girls, I felt like I took my own justice in having a voice,” she says. “You are inclined to think that you are on your own but I wasn’t the only girl at that time. There was a wide range of victims who had also been through it. “Some of my abusers are still on the streets without any convictions. It’s an open secret now in this area that it wasn’t just three men. There were a lot more.” Cumbria Constabulary rejects the suggestion that it intended to silence Ellie Reynolds or her family. It said it had a duty to investigate the blackmail complaint because there was an identified victim of blackmail. It acknowledged shortcomings in the support provide to Laura and Elizabeth in 2010 and said its approach to victims has significantly developed since then. It said both women later received support. It also acknowledged that victim support practices may not always have met the desired standard when compared to current practice. It says it has strengthened its response through various initiatives and continues to learn from feedback. Sarj Miah was invited to respond to the allegations made by Ellie Reynolds and Ellie Williams in the documentary but did not reply. Barrow: The Truth Behind the Grooming Lie. 9pm Sky documentaries, Sunday, 2 August