BTS: Groomed - The Truth Behind the Lie

Three-part documentary series Groomed: The Truth Behind The Lie – produced by Sandpaper Films in co-production with Full Story Films – released on Sky and NOW this week.

When Ellie Williams’ allegations of grooming went viral, they tore the town of Barrow apart and triggered national outrage. Developed and filmed over three years, against the backdrop of a growing national reckoning and public inquiry into grooming, the series is based on extensive access and original research and features survivor testimony and first-time interviews with the family of Ellie Williams.

Here, producer Bill Mostyn from Sandpaper Films describes the development of the documentary.

When I arrived at Sandpaper Films in February 2023, it was barely a month since Eleanor Williams had been found guilty of perverting the course of justice. Williams had claimed she was trafficked and sexually abused by a grooming gang in Barrow-in-Furness. Photographs of her injuries, posted on Facebook, had provoked nationwide outrage. But then, in a twist that moved the story onto the front pages, police established in court that she had inflicted injuries upon herself and falsely accused innocent men.

For documentary producers, it was the kind of story that generated an immediate scramble: a shocking allegation, an extraordinary reversal and a community left bitterly divided. By the time I joined Sandpaper, its owners, Henry Singer and Susannah Price, and then head of development Sarah Harris, were already exploring the story. They asked me to take on the development and establish whether there was a larger story beneath the headlines.

What followed became a two-and-a-half-year undertaking, built upon conversations with people who entrusted us with deeply personal experiences. My role was to gain their trust, ensure their voices were heard and manage expectations about when the series might reach the screen.

From the beginning, we believed the accepted account might be concealing something more complicated. While there was no suggestion of wrongdoing by the men, Williams had been convicted of falsely accusing, the question was no longer simply why one young woman had invented such terrible allegations, but whether there was any truth buried within her wider claims – and whether other young women in Barrow had experienced the kind of abuse she described.

Through directing the acclaimed BBC feature documentary The Betrayed Girls about the Rochdale grooming scandal, Henry had developed a close relationship with detective-turned-whistle-blower Maggie Oliver. Maggie introduced us to Ellie’s mother, Allison, who had already been approached by numerous production companies.

As a former BBC journalist, I had worked on several grooming cases before and understood the difficult debate around the ethnic dimension of some high-profile scandals. I also agreed this should not become another retelling of how one young woman had lied. The more important question was what her lies might have obscured.

I travelled to Barrow to meet Allison and Ellie’s sister, Lucy. During that first visit, I also began nurturing relationships with Ellie Reynolds, another young woman who had reported years of grooming to the police, and with her parents, Ian and Kara, who had desperately tried to persuade the authorities to listen.

For Allison and Lucy, there was a strong sense that significant aspects of Ellie’s story had never been properly interrogated, while Ellie Reynolds and her family felt that, despite knocking on every available door, her allegations had not been taken seriously. Both families had accumulated extensive collections of documents, photographs and correspondence, allowing us to begin to piece together their experiences.

One name repeatedly surfaced: Shaha Joman Miah, known as Sarj, who was due to stand trial alongside two of his brothers (Shaha Amran and Shaha Alman Miah) over historic allegations of sexual abuse. Those proceedings raised wider questions about grooming and exploitation in Barrow – particularly when considered alongside Ellie Reynolds’ account of being groomed a number of years after the historic allegations against the brothers.

As we spent more time with the families, it became clear that Ellie Williams’ fabricated allegations had come to define the town. The danger was that, in proving she had lied, the authorities and wider media had created a narrative that diverted attention from other young women who had been abused.

The final piece of the development came when we joined forces with Sky’s investigative journalist Liz Lane. Liz had been asking many of the same questions and making connections with survivors elsewhere. Her work strengthened our belief that Barrow might reflect a wider national failure.

Sky became the natural home for the project. Like us, Sky’s Head of Documentaries Hayley Reynolds wanted a series that reached beyond the familiar narrative. If we could establish that genuine grooming had been somehow obscured by Williams’ false allegations then there was an important story to tell.

Securing the commission was only the beginning. The trial of the Miah brothers was postponed for a year, during which time we continued to develop elements of the series without full staffing. Maintaining contributors’ trust became vital. They feared the series might never be made. Meanwhile, documentaries about Williams appeared on the BBC and Channel 4, increasing the pressure to ensure ours offered something fundamentally different.

The eventual convictions of the Miah brothers allowed the production team, led by series directors Katie Hindley and Ceri Isfryn, to bring that wider story into focus. The team’s painstaking work – and, above all, the courage of the survivors – gave those women the space to describe what happened to them and what followed when they tried to seek help.

The result is a series that tells us far more than the accepted story of one woman who lied. It has painful echoes of Rochdale, Telford, Oxford and other towns where young women said they were being exploited, while the institutions responsible for protecting them arguably failed to recognise – or adequately confront – what was happening. (868 words)

Sandpaper Films’ Groomed: The Truth Behind The Lie premiers Sunday, August 2nd at 9:00 PM on Sky Documentaries

The Lie That Exposed The Truth  was commissioned by Phil Edgar-Jones, Executive Director, Unscripted Originals at Sky for Cécile Frot-Coutaz, Chief Advertising and Content Officer, CEO Sky Studios. The Head of Documentary Commissioning is Hayley Reynolds and the Commissioning Editor for Sky is Bruce Fletcher. The series  is produced by Sandpaper Films in co-production with Full Story Films, Sky News’ premium long-form documentary unit. Henry Singer, Catey Sexton and Susannah Price serve as Executive Producers for Sandpaper Films.  The series is directed by Ceri Isfryn and Katie Hindley, the Series Producer is Farah Qayum, the Senior Producer is Alexandra McArdle and the producer is Bill Mostyn. Siobhan Sinnerton and Vesna Cudic are Executive Producers for Full Story Films and Liz Lane is Producer.