A British ‘mum on the run’ who fled the UK for a dream life in Thailand where she has been detained for overstaying her visa has spoken for the first time crying that she is ‘rotting in a hell hole prison’ teeming with rats and insects.
Ellis Matthews, 32, is being held in the Mothers and Children Immigration Detention Centre in Bangkok with her four-year-old son Cairo.
The facility has a notorious reputation for its overcrowded, squalid conditions.
Ms Matthews once appeared on reality show Judge Rinder after apparently squandering a £6million fortune and since coming to Thailand has amassed 16,400 followers on TikTok, thanks to her controversial bikini-clad posts on how her lifestyle in the tourism hotspot is funded by British taxpayers’ hard-earned money.
But she now finds herself locked up in a decrepit cell in the stifling heat for more than 20 hours per day with 16 other female inmates and their children, surviving on lumpy rice and rat meat while sleeping on a dirty concrete floor.
They only have two soiled toilets and one shower to share between them and a fan that intermittently works.
It was here that MailOnline visited Ms Matthews where she spoke exclusively about her incarceration and controversial posts about cheating the British benefits system.
She cried: ‘This is hell on earth, it’s the worst prison that you can imagine.
Ellis Matthews, 32, is being held in the Mothers and Children Immigration Detention Centre in Bangkok with her four-year-old son Cairo
But she now finds herself locked up in a decrepit cell in the stifling heat for more than 20 hours per day with 16 other female inmates and their children, surviving on lumpy rice and rat meat while sleeping on a dirty concrete floor
In one of the photos on TikTok, an image shows a fellow inmate behind bars in the filthy lock-up
I’m locked up in a cell for most of the day with 16 other people and none of them speak English. It’s so hot and overcrowded that you can barely breathe.
‘My skin is covered in rashes, both me and my son have got lice, terrible insect bites and there’s rats running around.
We haven’t even got any access to medication. Nobody is helping me, and I’ve just been left here to rot.’
She claimed that they are fed the same food three times per day of lumpy rice and ‘rat or pigeon’ meat.
Fighting back the tears she added: ‘The guards tell us it’s chicken, but I can promise you it’s not. It’s so disgusting that we can’t eat it, so Cairo and I have been surviving on just the rice, which makes you want to vomit.
‘We can’t sleep at night because there’s so much screaming and shouting.
There are 35 women and children in the cell next to ours. It’s unbearable in here, I can’t stop crying and just want to get out as quickly as possible.’
Thai authorities have informed Ms Matthews who is originally from Bamber Bridge, Lancashire that she will be deported once she is able to buy herself an airline ticket back to the UK but until that time will remain in detention.
Ms Matthews once appeared on reality show Judge Rinder after apparently squandering a £6million fortune and since coming to Thailand has amassed 16,400 followers on TikTok
She cried: ‘This is hell on earth, it’s the worst prison that you can imagine’
She was arrested on 3 March by Thai immigration officials at her home in Pattaya after overstaying her visa which was cancelled on 21 February.
Thai officials told MailOnline that they took action against her after a local anti-child abuse organisation raised concerns about Cairo’s welfare.
She said: ‘I’ve got the money for an airline ticket but can’t get to it because they won’t allow me to access my bank account so what am I supposed to do?’
‘My visa was cancelled because some people in the UK have been trolling me and accused me of horrible things like human trafficking and child abuse.
They got the Thai authorities involved and it’s led to me ending up here. I should have left when my visa was cancelled but I couldn’t because I didn’t have the money at the time.’
Ms Matthews insisted that she is determined not to return to the UK because if she does, she fears that social services will take her son from her.
She said: ‘I’m not going to lose Cairo and there’s no way I’m going back to the UK.
I want to go to another country like Cambodia or Turkey. I’m a single mother who’s just trying to survive and raise her son.
Ellis Matthews, 32, who once appeared on reality show Judge Rinder after claiming to have squandered a £6million fortune, posts bikini-clad videos on TikTok claiming her life in South Asia is funded by £2,300 monthly British benefits
Ms Matthews insisted that she is determined not to return to the UK because if she does, she fears that social services will take her son from her
The facility has a notorious reputation for its overcrowded, squalid conditions
‘I want to go to a country where I can be with him but it’s not going to be the UK, I can promise you that.’
But in a major setback, Thai officials have insisted that according to the country’s immigration laws, she can only return to the UK as she is a British national, leaving her between a rock and a hard place.
Becoming visibly emotional as she held Cario, Ms Matthews said: ‘If I have to, I will renounce my British citizenship because I’m not going to let my son go into the British care system.
‘But if no other country will take me then I will have to remain in this detention centre and the thought of that sickens me.
‘I’m fighting for my life and future, all I want is to live peacefully with my baby.’
Ms Matthews has become a controversial figure on social media with the account ‘mum on the run’ because of her posts helping others to negotiate the UK benefits system while living in the sunshine.
In one video, she is seen holding a fistful of notes and wearing a string bikini, tells her audience: ‘I picked up my Disability Living Allowance today and I’ve been doing so for the past four years of not living in the UK.’
In another, she bragged about receiving £2,300 a month in benefits due to her ‘six mental disorders.’
Ms Matthews has become a controversial figure on social media with the account ‘mum on the run’ because of her posts helping others to negotiate the UK benefits system while living in the sunshine
She insisted to MailOnline: ‘These videos were just a joke. The truth is that I never got any UK benefits while in Thailand, not a single penny’
But she insisted to MailOnline: ‘These videos were just a joke. The truth is that I never got any UK benefits while in Thailand, not a single penny.
‘I can understand why people in the UK are angry and upset about them which is why there’s not a lot of sympathy for me. But I was just lying in my videos to get more followers and make some money from my TikTok account. It was all a big hoax, that’s all.’
She also insisted that she never enjoyed a £6 million fortune, as she once claimed but did receive £1.6 million after successfully suing Lancashire local authorities for letting her down in her childhood.
There is no record of the award ever having been made.
But she maintained: ‘All that money has now gone and I’m not sure myself how I spent it. I wish I had that money now because I would not be in this messy situation.’
She was initially arrested at her home in Pattaya and taken to a local immigration detention centre, from where she posted a number of TikTok videos about the conditions she was being held in after smuggling in a mobile phone.
But she was then moved to the high security Mothers and Children Immigration Detention Centre and her phone was seized leaving her unable to communicate with the outside world.
She said: ‘I wish I had my phone so that I could show people these conditions because it’s a breach of my human rights. Nobody should be treated like this.’
She revealed that she left the UK four years ago because of what she claimed was an orchestrated campaign by some women in her hometown who questioned her ability as a mother and were trying to get social services to take her unborn child from her.
She also insisted that she never enjoyed a £6 million fortune, as she once claimed but did receive £1.6 million after successfully suing Lancashire local authorities for letting her down in her childhood
She was pregnant at the time with Cairo, who was born in Turkey soon after she arrived in the country
She was pregnant at the time with Cairo, who was born in Turkey soon after she arrived in the country.
Ms Matthews, who has previously gone by the name of Ellise May Matthews,
also has two other sons who are still in the UK, and she said that she is only partially involved in their lives and does not have custody of them.
One is with his grandmother, another with his father.
She said: ‘A group of women in the UK co-ordinated a campaign against me and that’s why I left. I did not abandon my children, but I had no other choice. These women have continued to troll me and are making me out to be a bad person who does terrible things.’
Ms Matthews travelled to Thailand just under three years ago and settled in the Pattaya area where she lived in a housing complex made up of holiday villas popular with expats.
She said that while in the country she did not work and survived by trying to generate money on social media and from renting out a property she owned in the UK.
Officials from the UK Embassy in Bangkok visited Ms Matthews last week and have promised to support her as her and Cairo’s future hangs in the balance.
She sobbed: ‘The uncertainty is killing me, and I don’t know how long I’ll be able to survive in here. I just want to be a good mum to my son and be left alone with him.’
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