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Mo Farah : I was Trafficked To the UK as a Child

Collins Ogutu | 1 year ago
Mo Farah : I was trafficked to the UK as a child
Mo Farah : I was trafficked to the UK as a child

Sir Mo Farah was brought to the UK illegally as a child and forced to work as a domestic servant, he has revealed.

The Olympic star in a TV documentary recalled how  he was given the name Mohamed Farah by those who flew him over from Djibouti. His real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin.

Mo was flown over from the east African country aged nine by a woman he had never met, and then made to look after another family's children, he told BBC.

When they arrived in the UK, the woman took him to her flat in Hounslow, west London, and took a piece of paper off him that had his relatives' contact details on.

"Right in front of me, she ripped it up and put it in the bin. At that moment, I knew I was in trouble," he said.

Mo said he had to do housework and childcare if he wanted food in his mouth. 

He remembered how the woman told him, "If you ever wanna see your family again, don't say anything."

"Often I would just lock myself in the bathroom and cry," he says.

For the first few years the family didn't allow him to go to school, but when he was about 12 he enrolled in Year 7 at Feltham Community College.

Staff were told Sir Mo was a refugee from Somalia.

Sir Mo's PE teacher, Alan Watkinson, noticed a transformation in the young boy when he hit the athletics track.

"The only language he seemed to understand was the language of PE and sport," he said.

Mo said sport was a lifeline for him as "the only thing I could do to get away from this [living situation] was to get out and run".

He eventually confided in Mr Watkinson about his true identity, his background, and the family he was being forced to work for

The PE teacher contacted social services and helped Sir Mo to be fostered by another Somali family.

"I still missed my real family, but from that moment everything got better," Sir Mo says.

"I felt like a lot of stuff was lifted off my shoulders, and I felt like me. That's when Mo came out - the real Mo."

Mo began making a name for himself as an athlete and aged 14 he was invited to compete for English schools at a race in Latvia - but he didn't have any travel documents.

Mr Watkinson helped him apply for British citizenship under the name Mohamed Farah, which was granted in July 2000.

In the documentary, barrister Alan Briddock tells Sir Mo his nationality was technically "obtained by fraud or misrepresentations".

Legally, the government can remove a person's British nationality if their citizenship was obtained through fraud.

According to him he wants to tell his story to challenge public perceptions of trafficking and slavery.

"I had no idea there was so many people who are going through exactly the same thing that I did. It just shows how lucky I was," he says.

"What really saved me, what made me different, was that I could run."

Mo previously claimed to have joined his dad, but he was killed in the Somalian civil war.

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