A British ‘mum on the run’ languishing in a ‘hell hole prison’ in Thailand for overstaying her visa has gone on hunger strike in protest at her treatment and conditions within the facility.
Ellis Matthews, 32, is being held in the Mothers and Children Immigration Detention Centre in Bangkok with her four-year-old son Cairo, where she says she has been made to endure filthy conditions in a sweltering climate and given rat meat to eat.
The prison has a notorious reputation for its overcrowded, squalid conditions where inmates lack basic rights and are routinely abused.
Thai officials have fined Ms Matthews £400 for overstaying her visa and informed her that she can only be deported to the UK as it is her country of origin. She will also have to buy her own air ticket back.
But she is insisting that she does not want to return to Britain as she fears that social services will take Cairo from her.
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.
Speaking from inside the shabby detention centre, she exclusively told MailOnline: ‘I’m refusing to eat until I’m treated property and conditions here improve.
‘I’ve not had any food for the past 48 hours and almost fainted on Sunday. But the guards don’t care, they have been shouting abuse at me and one of them even pushed me. My basic human rights are being denied and my hunger strike will continue until that changes.’
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
A fellow inmate behind bars in the filthy lock-up in footage shared on TikTok
She added: ‘The food is disgusting, they give us rat meat with badly cooked rice so I’m not missing much. There are no proper washing or toilet facilities and both Cairo and I are covered in insect bites and skin rashes.
‘I demand that I be allowed to leave Thailand for another country with him because we are being treated worse than animals.’
Ms Matthews is 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.
MailOnline first visited Ms Matthews over the weekend where she shared grim details 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.
‘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.’
Prior to her apparent incarceration, she says she lived in a one-bedroom bungalow with ‘rent and bills paid for by the British benefit system’
Ms Matthews, who has previously gone by the name of Ellise May Matthews, says she’s now being forced to endure bleak conditions inside the Thai detention centre
Following her hunger strike, Ms Matthews repeated her demand that she does not want to return to the UK.
She said: ‘I’ve asked the Thai authorities if I can go to China, Cambodia, Turkey or any other country but they keep telling me that I have to return to my country of origin. I’m not going to do that and will stick to this hunger strike until they change their minds.’
But an immigration official told MailOnline: ‘We’d only be happy to get her out of Thailand, but she first has to return to the UK, as per our laws or remain in detention. If she wants to go to any other country after that then that’s none of our business.’
Ms Matthews who is originally from Bamber Bridge also stated that her protest is in response to her not being given access to her bank account, maintaining that she has the funds to buy an air ticket out of Thailand.
She said: ‘I don’t have my mobile and am locked up so how can I get to my money? I’m begging them to let me leave for anywhere except the UK and if I have to, I will renounce my British citizenship.
‘I’ve been abandoned and left to rot in this place so am now fighting for my survival.’
Prior to her arrest on 3 March, Ms Matthews was living with Cairo in the Country Club Villa complex in Pattaya.
They shared a smart, two-bedroom villa and paid close to £400 per month rent. She was arrested by Thai immigration police at the property 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.
Kama set up a GoFundMe page to help Ellis, with donations currently at £150
The Mother and Child Detention Centre in Bangkok, Thailand
Her former home now stands empty after the landlord arrived last week and removed all of Ms Matthews’s belongings.
It is located in a complex of 120 villas that are occupied by some expats but mainly locals.
Neighbours told MailOnline how they had constant concerns about how Ms Matthews conducted herself since she moved in around a year ago.
Jason Lee said: ‘She’d walk around the garden topless, there was always screaming and shouting, and loud music being played. We are actually quite conservative around here and don’t like that kind of behaviour.
‘There is also a small Buddhist shrine in the garden of every home, but this woman would put bottles of beer on hers as she sat around drinking with hardly any clothes on. A lot of us were not happy about having her living amongst us. We are very glad that she has gone.’
He added: ‘It was always a mystery to us how she was earning money to live because she never did much apart from hang around the house not wearing many clothes.’
Another neighbour who did not want to be named said: ‘Some of us phoned the police to complain about her. There was always a lot of shouting coming from the house late into the night.
‘We’d also hear her son shouting and screaming a lot. This is a very quiet, nice area, she didn’t fit in at all and we couldn’t understand what she was doing here.’
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’
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
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.’
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 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.
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.’
