A BRIT mum who was locked up and “left to rot” in a hellhole Thai prison has reportedly returned to the UK – without her four-year-old son.
Ellis Matthews, 32, a wannabe influencer who spent her days in Asia sharing tips on how to fraudulently claim government benefits, was deported from Thailand after overstaying her visa.
Pixel8000Ellis Matthews ‘mum on the run’ was left to rot in Thai prison before being deported to the UK[/caption]
Pixel8000Matthews posted videos detailing how she scammed benefits from the British government[/caption]
Matthews spent four months behind bars with her four-year-old son Cairo after going viral on TikTok for her controversial “mum on the run” bikini-clad videos.
In her posts, Matthews bragged about her “dream life” being funded by £2300 per month in swindled British benefits.
Claiming to have six mental disorders and a disability, she posted videos advising her viewers on how they too could cheat the UK system for a life in the sun.
Matthews was arrested at her Pattaya home in March, after overstaying her visa, which had been cancelled on February 21.
After being unable to afford the trip home, she was locked up for months in a dingy Thai prison alongside her son.
She then refused to return to the UK, convinced social services would remove Cairo from her care.
Matthews is now back in the country while her young son remains in Thailand with a relative.
She told the Daily Mail: “Leaving Cairo behind was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do”.
“I had no choice because I’m the victim of an online hate campaign that is making me out to be a bad mother,” she said.
“I would never allow him to be passed around suffering in UK care – he has the right to a safe childhood.”
The TikToker spent months locked up inside notorious Mothers and Children Immigration Detention Centre in Bangkok.
Held captive in a shabby cell for more than 20 hours a day, 16 other inmates and their children lived alongside Matthews and Cairo, surviving on a diet of lumpy rice and rat meat.
All inmates slept on the dirty concrete floor.
“The conditions were horrific,” she told the Daily Mail.
“There were hundreds of women and children crammed into filthy rooms, forced to sleep on bare floors without mattresses.
“Toilets overflowed, disease spread unchecked and children were locked indoors for 24 hours with just a 35 minutes outside per week,” she added.
Pixel8000Matthews has said she won’t return to the UK with her son for fear child protective services will take him away from her[/caption]
Pixel8000She now wants to relocate to Turkey or Cambodia[/caption]
Matthews said her son “saw things no toddler should ever see”, detailing fights, violent breakdowns and abuse.
“Around 30 per cent of detainees were mentally disabled,” she claimed.
“They were often beaten and left handcuffed to the bars for days at a time.”
The mum-fluencer said Cairo refused to eat the prison food, fully regressing to full time breastfeeding.
“At one point, I even breastfed another starving child because there was no other way to keep them alive,” she recounted.
Matthews described scenes of malnourished children, “untreated and left in despair”.
“Cairo lost weight, regressed developmentally and became traumatised,” she said.
Pixel8000Matthews languished in a Thai prison for months after overstaying her visa[/caption]
Pixel8000Her son was with her in the cell alongside numerous other mothers and children[/caption]
She claimed he has since been diagnosed with several illnesses requiring medical treatment.
Since returning to the UK, Matthews said she has remained in hiding due to online hate.
“I’m too scared to go out of the house because these people are looking for me and threatening to expose my whereabouts,” she said.
“They are constantly making false allegations that I abused my son and want to destroy my life.”
Originally from Bamber Bridge, Lancashire, Matthews said she had been left “disturbed” by people.
“Both my son and I are suffering,” she said.
“I just want to bring him back to the UK and have a normal life with him.
“But right now, his safe return is not possible.”
She now claims her TikTok videos about scamming benefits were “a joke” to “get more followers and make some money“.
“The truth is I never got any UK benefits while in Thailand, not a single penny,” she said.
“It was all a big hoax, that’s all.
“I can understand why people were angry and upset about them.”
She admitted her videos prior to being locked up had been “rage bait”.
Since being released from prison and deported, Matthews has shared a detailed account of her time in detention, including having to “fight people to protect her son”.
Pixel8000Matthews said she had to fight in jail to protect her son[/caption]
In one video she says: “Imagine being locked in a filthy foreign jail with your three-year-old baby”.
“There was no bed, no toys, just a concrete floor that my three-year-old cried to sleep on every night,” she said.
Matthews said they were living amongst rats and cockroaches, and claimed “some children were malnourished and the disabled children were abandoned”.
“If you do not have money when you get there you are going to have a difficult time,” she added.
“You even need to pay for places to sleep on the floor, and it can be as much as £300 just for a place to lie down.
“They sell the floor space by the tile,” she explained.
She described scenes of 80 to 100 people crammed into one “filthy little cell” with 30 – 35 of those people being “mentally unwell”.
Pixel8000She now claims her benefits scam videos were a hoax[/caption]
The comments on her videos remain mixed, with one person saying: “You literally pay 500 baht (£11.53) per day you overstay the fine, you didn’t pay the fine and let your son go through that. Wild”.
Others have been more supportive with one person saying: “Was so unfair what happened to you both all coz of spiteful cruel people”.
Thai authorities revealed they had taken action against her after a local anti-child abuse organisation raised concerns about Cairo’s welfare.
Matthews denied this, saying her 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”.
Despite her prison ordeal, Matthews still said she was determined not to return to the UK with Cairo.
“I’m not going to lose Cairo and there’s no way I’m going back to the UK,” she said.
She told the Daily Mail that she planned to “go to another country”, suggesting Cambodia or Turkey as possible destinations.
CorbisEllis named Cambodia as a potential next destination for her and her son[/caption]