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

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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? They will use the children, saying, ‘Daddy should be home with them for Christmas’, and if there are no children, then they will say things like, ‘We should be together for Christmas’ and ‘I don’t want to spend it on my own’ and ‘Show some compassion’.” 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.” Rachel Williams studied literature before becoming an editor and publisher of children's books. She is also the creator of best-selling natural history and adventure books, including The Atlas of Adventure series and Illuminature. She lives with her husband and two children in London. 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.

I think promoting this whole narrative and celebrating a sociopathic, narcissistic, proven criminal is wrong,” Williams told Vanity Fair in a recent interview. “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.” Over the next year our relationship progressed, and it was going well, we went on walks together and had fun. 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. The next vivid moment of abuse was when I was seven months pregnant, after an argument Darren had lifted me off the floor by my throat, he let me go when my lips turned blue - those were his words.

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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 Williams was 21 years old and a single mum to her two-year-old son Josh when she said she met a “very charming” and “funny” man named Darren in March 1993, with whom she went on to get married and have a baby. 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.

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 don’t want to litigate every [plot point]. But are we forgetting the fact that this person is a convicted felon and chronic hustler? How come every other character [in Anna’s circle] is completely enamored with Anna, and yet my character’s liking of Anna is the only one that people think must have been for reasons that are objectionable? Could it not have been that I, too, thought she was interesting and smart and funny? They reached out to get my option, but at that point HBO already had it. [Editor’s note: Williams’s book was optioned by Lena Dunham, but it is no longer in development. The story rights were returned to Williams.] On 19 August 2011, my estranged husband walked into my place of work, a hair salon, and opened fire on me with a sawn-off shotgun. The thing that bothered me the most was in every chapter I got the impression that this wasn't meant to be an honest account of Rachel's story but rather the author attempting to paint herself in the best possible light in every situation, both big and small. It seemed that pieces of the story were glossed over or omitted to for this reason. And EVERYTHING was someone else's fault. Fault was placed at the hands of her husband, his family, the police, government agencies, etc and there was blame to go around for sure, but not once did she say "I could have done something differently." I would have liked this book much more and been able to empathize if the author would have taken just a little responsibility, for anything. And in case anyone is getting the wrong idea I'm not talking about her being abused obviously, but I can't go into details without spoiling some of the story.I saw Darren at times as being vulnerable, he never got over his brother's death and suffered anxiety and depression, he would really open up to me, I saw he had a bit of a temper, but don't we all? 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?” When asked if crime pays, Anna told BBC Newsnight: “In a way, it did.” Do we care more that she made this outrageous statement than we do that it seems to be true? 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?

The show dramatizes Jessica Pressler reaching out to you when she was working on her New York magazine article, and you declining to participate because you wanted to tell your own story. But in terms of the TV show, did Shonda Rhimes or the series reach out to you at any point? But, at the time of that first strangulation, she said her husband was so “remorseful, on his knees crying and apologising”. We must start to look at these perpetrators through the same lenses as sex offenders and the Government needs to invest so much more into this disease that is destructive. 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. In your character’s scene on the witness stand, Anna’s lawyer accuses you, too, of profiting off of Anna because you sold a book—even though you sold a book, in part, to help recoup your losses from Anna. But there were other immeasurable negative effects of your relationship with Anna, I imagine.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.