Rape survivor forced to relive trauma after troll tags her in x-rated video

28 February 2024 , 15:16

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Ellie now campaigns on behalf of other survivors

A rape survivor was cruelly forced to relive her trauma after a vile troll tagged her in a pornographic video - and claimed it showed her having sex with her attacker.

Ellie Wilson was raped by her ex partner, Daniel McFarlane while at the University of Glasgow between December 2017 and February 2018. The 26-year-old gathered pieces of evidence against McFarlane, which included messages and recordings of him admitting to his sick crimes.

McFarlane, from Inverness, was convicted and jailed for five years in July 2022 for two counts of rape and attempting to defeat the ends of justice following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

Ellie, who has since campaigned on behalf of other survivors, was later left sickened when a social media user shared explicit footage on X, formally Twitter, with a caption claiming the video showed her with McFarlane. She told the Record : "I felt so disgusted by the post. I got the notification from an account with no profile picture - a spam account - and it said it was a leaked video of me. They had tagged my twitter handle.

"The video was not of me. It was just a random pornographic video. I tweeted about it and the troll then tried to post the video again, this time in the comments, so I immediately blocked the account."

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Ellie Wilson was raped by her ex partner while at the University of Glasgow (Daily Record)

Campaigner Ellie has since tried to end the stigma around relationship rape and spoken out about being "retraumatised" by her attacker's lawyer in court. The graduate is also calling for better treatment of rape victims. Taking to social media, Ellie highlighted the issue, saying women with strong voices are often targeted by men online in an attempt to silence them.

She said: "There seems to be a large community of men online that hate women. Disgusting sexualised comments are being made by trolls, towards women, all of the time. I have dealt with so much online abuse over the past year, so having this happen was really scary. The lengths that some people will go to to hurt and silence women is very worrying."

"I use my social media platform to raise awareness about violence against women - but if women are being chased off of those online spaces because of the abuse that they face, then online platforms must do more to protect them."

The Mirror has approached the X platform for comment.

Ryan Carroll