Olympic great Mo Farah — the winner of four gold medals and one of Britain’s greatest and best-loved athletes — has been carrying a secret burden all these years: He was illegally brought to the U.K. as a youth and forced to care for other children before he escaped a life of servitude through running.
What happened? Farah, 39, says his real name is Hussein Abdi Kahin and that he was from taken from the East African nation of Djibouti when he was about 8 or 9. He says a woman he didn’t know brought him to Britain using fake travel documents that included his picture alongside the name Mohammed Farah. The woman took him to an apartment in London where he was forced to care for her children.
How did he escape? Farah says his fortunes changed when he was finally allowed to attend school at age 12. He began to blossom on the track and eventually told his story to a physical education instructor. The teacher contacted local officials, who arranged for a Somali family to take him in as a foster child.
What happened to his family? Farah previously said he had moved to Britain with his parents as a refugee from Somalia. But he says his parents never were in the U.K. His father was killed by gunfire during unrest in Somalia when Farah was 4. His mother and two brothers live on the family farm in Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia that is not internationally recognized.
Why share his story now? Farah, who was granted U.K. citizenship in 2000 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017, said he had feared he would be deported if he spoke about his childhood experiences. He decided to tell his story to publicize and challenge people’s perceptions of human trafficking, he said. “I had no idea there was so many people who are going through exactly the same thing that I did,” he said. “It just shows how lucky I was.”
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