Mo Farah, the most successful British track athlete in modern Olympic history, revealed that he was trafficked to the United Kingdom as a child under a false name.
“Most people know me as Mo Farah, but that’s not my name or the reality,” he said in clips released Monday.
In previous interviews, Farah had said he came to the United Kingdom from Somalia with his parents as a refugee. But in the documentary set to debut this week, the 39-year-old opened up about the true experiences of his childhood. Farah said his family was “torn apart” when he was 4 years old after his father was killed in a civil war in Somalia. Years later, he was separated from his mother and went to stay with family in Djibouti. From there, Farah says he was brought to the United Kingdom at the age of 9 by a woman he did not know. On the travel visa, he was named Mohamed Farah.“For years I just kept blocking it out,” Farah said. “But you can only block it out for so long.
“I had no idea there was so many people who are going through exactly the same thing that I did,” Farah said. “It just shows how lucky I was.”
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