Mo Farah isn’t who he says he is

[SnottyLottie]

news.sky.com/story/sir-mo-farah-reveals-the-truth-about-how-he-came-to-the-uk-12650126

My mind is actual blown after reading that. Poor man to have to go through such an ordeal. I wonder what ever happened to the real Mohammad Farah? ☹️

Hope this doesn’t effect his citizenship or anything.

Agreed.

That’s what he says, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. I come from the same culture and I know that relatives bring kids as their own in favour for the mother who is struggling. Some men bring their sister and her kids as their wife and kids, back then there was no DNA requirement and those kids take a fake name or the surname of the family member who got them here, Farah might will be a family relative’s name. So he was here with relatives with the blessing of his own mum and other relatives, that’s why I say it’s not trafficking.
And for your comment “ he was made to work” that sells papers here , in reality my culture only uses little girls as servants NEVER boys.

I appreciate you are from the same culture so more familiar with how things happen, however I don't think you can presume to speak for everyone in that culture. Mo is saying he was trafficked. By a person he had never met. He doesn't mention they were a relative or known to his family. He says he had to do domestic chores and look after children. It's possible that it's mostly girls used as servants, but he is saying he was. Why would he make this up?

I can well believe his mother thought she was doing the best for him as a widow with several children and knew or is related to the woman who trafficked him to the UK. As the child of another family I can also well believe he wasn't well treated once they got here. He was prevented from contacting his real family and was completely dependent on the people who brought him here, in an alien culture.

It's still trafficking - he was brought here illegally under a false identity and was a child with no say over what happened to him. Not letting him go to school kept him out of the sights of the authorities. The person who brought him here is a criminal.

You're falling for the oldest trick in the book. It's not good for anyone to pit anyone's story against another. Yes, it's not fair that Mo's fame means he won't be in legal trouble but let's make it so that all trafficked people are treated with dignity and not forcibly removed of their documents.

this is who it was for @kateandme

Is anybody else watching the documentary? Mo comes across as such a lovely, humble man. I really feel for all he has been through.

But the whole point of telling his story is to give some humanity to it for other refugees, isn't it? Here is a man who was lauded as a national hero when he won his gold medals and he could just as easily have been that man on a rubber dinghy, shipped off to Rwanda. He's humanising people who were trafficked.

Just finished watching it and he comes across really well. Clearly remains very affected from his childhood ordeal - as you'd expect - and wanting answers to questions but no one able to do so for him.

Hopefully him speaking about his story and what happened to him will begin to help other children being exploited and trafficked even now.

Oh totally.sorryvif my post seemed I was having a go at him.or against his side of things.whst he has been through.keeing it secret.havingvto live both through it,coming past it and I bet the post trauma of it,well the man's amazing.and as brave and amazing as others who have managed to do the same as I just can't imagine having that experience.
And I think him telling his story was a brave thing to do.to shine a light,knowing his status now and to say well guess what idiots I'm one of those people you hate on.
My anger is at others.and there difference in both reaction to his story,to him and comments in relation to how they've treated other refugees.who are just like mo but are treated in our country with utter disdain.

Mo is a true gentleman. He seems so fragile. I am so glad he got to the top of his profession and the beautiful family he has. But seeing him with his mum just broke me..they took him and left his sleeping brother / his twin. How must he have felt.

The woman who took him in and fostered him said he wasn't treated as human by the family he worked for.

I though her brother and SIL were the family who trafficked him. But it's just dawning it might have been her husbands brother as she is also a Farah.

Maybe they wanted a boy because they could get boy ID. I do wonder about the other children he travelled with.

Muslim women don't take their husband's surname so it can't be her husband's family.

I watched the programme last night and found it interesting.
I'm still completely baffled as to what happened to the other (orginial) Mo Farah at the time the (now famous) Mo was trafficked? "Kinsi" seemed a bit vague about the fact that her relatives had effectively swapped their oldest child...but where was he...? (Was he now a servant for another family?)

I know someone with a similar story, African, male, sold and trapped in servitude with an 'Auntie', from 9 years old to 16 when he freed himself by virtue of receiving an NI number in his new name. Also in Hounslow. It's not uncommon unfortunately.

I was surprised to read that the traffickers sent him to school. That would have meant he was "in the system" and they could have been found out.
I thought child slaves were isolated and kept at home working, so the authorities wouldn't know about them.

Ah thanks for that. The name confused me.
So it was her brother and the actual Mo Farah was her nephew. Although she ended up fostering Mo as her sons friend.

@Fizbosshoes yes there seemed to be bits missing in what was being said. But I think the original Mo was still in Somaliland free of a life of slavery.

@DorchaAndLouis he only went to school when he was secondary age. He came when he was 9, and 12 before going to school.

He asked to go to school. Presumably the young children he'd been looking after were also now in school. So the family didn't have a need for him at home during the day.

Wasn't all this was explained in his 2013 warts'n'all autobiography?

It seems to me that the Beeb loves a lot of drama, with the adverts for the programme and the sink full of dirty pots, so I was pleased to see that Mo's 'way' was quiet and undramatic.
I think I have it right that the family for whom he worked did eventually send him to school. Correct me if I have misunderstood that.
If someone agrees to bring a child over from Africa and apparently give this child a push into an assumed 'better' life in the UK, is a few years of work regarded as part of the payment, as well as any cash that might change hands?

@Moonmelodies the biography apparently sticks with the original story he was brought by his "mother & father". Who we now know weren't his parents at all.

@upinaballoon that's my understanding too they eventually sent him to secondary. The school also questioned his origins and his wild behaviour but the 'parents' wouldn't talk to them.

He wrote it.

I've never read it just what his wife said on the telly last time. It stuck with the original story.

I've just read the intro as a Freeby on Amazon, he is telling bits of the truth and bits of the fake how he ended up in the UK story being brought here by parents.

Must have been so hard to keep that secret for so long.

I never thought I’d see and hear anything like that and for it to be so real.