‘Maybe we are alone’: Jude Bellingham questions whether authorities ‘care’ about racist abuse directed at Black footballers
Jude Bellingham was a 17-year-old footballer when he was abused by racist thugs at a train station in South Wales, the victim of what he describes as the modern day slave trade. The abuse was so severe that he was unable to return to school for several days.
Wales-based radio presenter and former footballer Jude Bellingham has told how he was the victim of a racist attack in the station car park on a train from Manchester to Cardiff on a Saturday morning in February 2012.
The abuse Bellingham suffered is believed to have been carried out by a group of teenage thugs who are thought to have been part of the racist football-club clique.
The group were described in court as ‘hardcore’ racists who had been on the run for five years.
They were on the football pitch on the morning of the assault at the station.
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Pursued: Jude Bellingham (left) was the victim of a racist attack in the town of Carmarthen. The teenager was surrounded by ‘hardcore’ racists
Desperate: Bellingham (right) wanted to be a teacher and felt ’embarrassed’ by being at a school that was too ‘racist’
Bellingham said that when he returned to school he was humiliated.
When he spoke to Wales Online he said he was the target of a series of attacks. He said: ‘I was not surprised in this day and age there were people who were prepared to commit criminal acts of violence on young black males.’
Bellingham said he was confronted by the racist gang at the station who said they wanted to know who he was before offering up cash.
‘I was in an area which had no security cameras,’ he added.
He said the attackers had demanded he give them his social security number and they added that they would get it if he did not immediately hand over his phone.
‘I felt very afraid,’ he said. ‘I had a sense that they could do anything to me and I