The Devil At Home: The horrific true story of a woman held captive

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Rachel described the life changing incident that occurred at 2.20pm on 19 August when Darren came into the hair salon where she worked with “a sawed-off shotgun”: “He hit me on the head with it and I tried to wrestle it off him. I remember being on the floor and a 92 year old who had been having her hair done was shaking me and telling me to get out, but I was so weak at that point. After a brief moment, I remembered a conversation we'd had at the party. An ex of mine had been mentioned, completely innocently and in passing. He wasn't even really a proper boyfriend, just someone I'd been on a few nights out with. It was Feb. 12, 2021 when I learned Anna had been released from prison. I was relieved by how little this update affected me—until a wave of interview requests came rolling in from journalists around the globe. At first, I ignored them, not wanting to rehash the past, and feeling like it would be presumptuous to speculate about whether Anna had changed or what she might do next without giving her a chance to show us. She had done her time and that was that. On the way home myself and Darren took a short cut through a park, his mood soon changed. "So what about you then, you little slag?" he spat. Sorokin, of course, was later convicted on multiple charges of grand larceny for defrauding numerous banks, hotels, and New York party people under the guise that she was a wealthy German heiress named Anna Delvey. Her rise and fall is documented in Netflix’s new scripted drama Inventing Anna, but it’s far from the first time Delvey’s story has been told. Williams, who’s played by Katie Lowes in the series, wrote about her encounters with Delvey in a 2018 essay for Vanity Fair, where she’d been working as a photo editor at the time.

Increased cases of domestic abuse are often reported during the Christmas period, due to factors like financial pressures, higher alcohol consumption and being cooped up together, according to Domestic Violence Assessment Consultancy and Training. It was destabilizing to have been so wrong about someone I trusted,” Williams explained in a recent piece for Time.“ I began writing to process what had happened, so I could learn from it and hopefully leave it behind.” Rachel Williams: I was caught off guard when Netflix announced its description of the character Rachel. [Editor’s note: Netflix described Rachel as “a natural-born follower whose blind worship of Anna almost destroys her job, her credit, and her life. But while her relationship with Anna is her greatest regret, the woman she becomes because of Anna may be Anna’s greatest creation.”]

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Domestic abuse and violence is an epidemic and it not only affects the victim and the children who too are victims, but it affects the whole family. The process of abuse is not a slap on the first, second or third date, this is a drip fed process over years. Darren made his way home after our first argument and returned the next day. When he saw my face he broke down, he apologised and said sorry. He said: "I can't believe I pushed you." The only sympathy I have after reading this book is for her sons and the animals Darren killed and tortured ( whilst Rachel stood by and watched and did nothing except go buy another dog)

Rachel now campaigns tirelessly in her efforts to end domestic violence and abuse, partly via the organisation she founded Stand Up to Domestic Abuse. But she said: “Things are no better than they were 10 years ago. How many more have to die before lessons are actually learnt?”

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I think there is a false narrative with regard to me not having been a strong person before this entire thing,” she told Vanity Fair.

I’m curious what will happen to Anna because of the show and the attention on her. For some people, attention is a more powerful commodity than money. Officers across London recently engaged in its targeted 16 Days of Action, when they increased the work they do to protect victims of domestic abuse and violence. Overall, 1,185 males and 250 females were arrested, with 70 not categorised. So far, 560 of those have been charged, while 165 have been issued a caution. Allen said the Met’s primary message is, “Please come forward as we can help.” She added: “Even though the pandemic is ongoing, we want offenders to face the criminal justice system. We are still here.” This was the day that switch went off in my head and I went full steam ahead regardless of the outcome. I could no longer exist in this environment with my boys.In the end, Williams says, the Netflix writers manipulated the real events to fit their own story, one of Sorokin as a product of our attention culture and materialist desires. The result, she says, is that the wrong conclusions will be made about the story’s particular characters, including herself. I think promoting this whole narrative and celebrating a sociopathic, narcissistic, proven criminal is wrong,” Williams told Vanity Fair in her first interview about the series. “Having had a front-row seat to [the Anna circus] for far too long, I’ve studied the way a con works more than anybody needs to. You watch the spectacle, but you’re not paying attention to what’s being marketed.” No, I never heard from her. From what I’ve seen of the series so far: Lowes’s concern for accuracy, when it comes to portraying me as I am, seems limited to the spelling of my full name. This sort of half-truth is more insidious than a total lie because it causes uninformed viewers to mistake fiction for fact based on mere fragments of reality—like my place of work, for instance, and even a photo of the real me within the end credits. This cosily illustrated volume wants us to take time to stand and stare, paying attention to everyday natural events, many of which can be appreciated in a garden or indoors through a window" — The Sunday Times

I think it’s the same with Netflix. It’s the same with Shonda. It’s a really convenient narrative people are projecting. But when you do that, you have to recognize you’re not looking for truth. You’re looking for your own version of the truth, and that’s not necessarily related to the reality of the people and the events [involved]. This is Shonda Rhimes’s first foray into a nonfiction story…And I think that they came into it thinking they were going to make a statement about what it’s like being a young woman in a man’s world, or the materialism of the fashion and art world. Obviously, there are a lot of things about those subjects that we all would agree with. Rachel tirelessly advocates for change in how society handles male violence against women and girls (Image: Rachel Williams) That must be why he was upset I thought. After explaining this to Darren and then saying it's the past its nothing to do with you, I then lost my footing and was toppling down a small embankment. I landed awkwardly, face down in stinging nettles. I read the headlines —Fake Heiress Anna Sorokin Says She Takes Being Branded a ‘Sociopath’ as a Compliment . . . Says Her Prison Sentence Was ‘a Huge Waste of Time’ . . . Sets Her Sights on Influencerdom with a New Vlog Series. I understood the implications of this sort of coverage, the glamorization of criminality, and I wondered who would speak up. I did not want it to be me. The issue was much larger than my past drama with Anna, larger than Anna, too, and larger than any one story—it’s a big-picture problem. Did Darren just push me? Being tipsy I wasn't sure and couldn't be sure because I had not been going out with him for long and he wasn't like that... right?Over the years the violence was sporadic, I was not only a victim of domestic abuse I was also very much a survivor, surviving in my own home, constantly risk assessing and managing outbursts by him to the best of my ability. There is so much that needs changing in regards to how we deal as a society with domestic abuse and violence - and we owe it to the next generation to eradicate it, this is all our problem. I know people are going to hate this review but these are my honest feelings after finishing this book. Towards the end when she met another man who then said he was leaving her due to him wanting a more religious life, she suddenly then found god that night, I just thought really? Rachel with her perpetrator Darren who she described as the "local hired gunman" and "a tyrant" (Image: Rachel Williams)