UK Olympic great Mo Farah says he was trafficked as a child

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.

In a new documentary, Farah 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 revelations come as Britain struggles to deal with a surge of people fleeing conflict and hunger in Africa, the Middle East and Asia on flimsy boats organized by human traffickers who assist the desperate to cross the