“If I wanted to eat, I had to work at home and look after the children”: Mo Farah reveals in a powerful documentary how he was a victim of human trafficking as a child | Sport

Earlier, Sir Mo Farah said he came to Britain with his parents as a refugee. Now the long-distance runner admits that his parents never came to Europe. When Farah was four years old, his father was killed in gunfights in Somaliland, which declared (never-recognized) independence in 1991. His mother and two brothers still live on a farm in Somaliland.

When Farah was eight or nine he was placed with relatives in Djibouti. From there he was brought to the United Kingdom by a woman he did not know. There he had to take care of the children of a family. “The truth is I’m not who you think I am. My name isn’t Mo Farah… For years I’ve tried to suppress that, but I can’t anymore,” Farah told the BBC. didn’t know and had no affiliation with gave me the name Mo Farah She told me I was being taken to the UK to stay with relatives I was happy about that as I had never been on a plane But once on the plane, the woman gave me false travel documents, which had the name Mohamed Farah next to my photo.” Farah’s real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin, the athlete named his son Hussein, one of his four children, after his own true identity.

When he arrived in London, Farah had another piece of paper with his family’s contact details with him, but it was torn to pieces before his eyes and thrown away by the woman who had taken him away in Africa. “That’s when I knew I was in trouble. If I wanted to get something to eat, I had to do household chores and look after the children. Washing them, cooking for them, cleaning… And if I said anything to anyone, ‘I would never see my family again’, I was told. I regularly locked myself in the bathroom to cry.”

The first two years in England Farah did not go to school. It was not until he was twelve that he was taken to school, where he was told that he was a Somali refugee. Teachers noticed his situation. “He arrived at school very unkempt and spoke very poor English. He seemed otherworldly,” recalls his former teacher Sarah Rennie. “The people who claimed to be his parents also never showed up at parent meetings.”

“The only language Mo seemed to speak was the language of sport,” adds former sports teacher Alan Watkinson. Farah himself says that sport was the only outlet for him at the time. “All I could do to escape my life situation was go out and walk. Ultimately, Farah confided in sports teacher Watkinson about his true identity, his background and the family he was forced to work for.

Watkinson contacted social services and helped Farah be placed with another Somali family, the parents of one of Farah’s boyfriends. “I still missed my real family, but from that moment on my life started to get better,” said Farah. “It was a huge weight off my shoulders. From that moment on I felt like ‘the real Mo’.” He stayed with the family for seven years.

When he was 14 years old, Farah started making a name for himself in the English athletics world. He was even invited to an international race in Latvia. The only problem: he had no valid travel documents. Again Watkinson came to the rescue. His former teacher helped Farah apply for British citizenship. In July 2000 – Farah was 17 at the time – he was officially recognized as a Brit.

Although it now appears that this was done on the basis of false documents. Farah needn’t worry, though. It is unlikely that he will lose his British nationality because he was brought into the country through human trafficking. Farah also says ‘often thinks of the real Mohamed Farah’. The documentary ends with the poignant moment when the two speak on the phone.

Finally, Farah says that he “didn’t know that so many people are going through the exact same thing.” “It shows once again how lucky I have been. What really made the difference for me is that I could walk.”

Mo Farah won gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters in 2012 and 2016 and collected six world titles at those distances.