Blitz Bureau
LONDON: A 14-year-old boy has lost a court case he brought against his own parents after they moved him from London to Ghana to go to boarding school, said a BBC report. The boy, described in court as shy, articulate, a keen cook and footballer, said his parents had tricked him into going to Africa, saying it was to visit a sick relative, according to the report. He said had he known he was being sent to boarding school “there would have been no way I would have agreed to it”.
But the High Court in London also heard his parents were worried he was being “groomed” into criminal activity. In a written statement to the court, the boy said: “I feel like I am living in hell. I really do not think I deserve this and I want to come home, back to England, as soon as possible.” In his judgment, High Court judge Justice Hayden said he recognised that “this is, in many ways, both a sobering and rather depressing conclusion.”
He said he was satisfied that the parents’ wish for their son to move to Ghana was “driven by their deep, obvious and unconditional love”. The boy was at risk of suffering greater harm returning to the UK, he said.
He said that the boy’s parents believe “and in my judgment with reason” that their son has “at very least peripheral involvement with gang culture and has exhibited an unhealthy interest in knives”.
The boy’s father told the judge the couple did not want their son to be “yet another black teenager stabbed to death in the streets of London.” The boy, who had lived in the UK since birth, said he was “mocked” and “never settled in” at the school in Ghana. He said he “could also barely understand what was going on and I would get into fights”.
The boy wrote that he was “so scared and desperate” that he emailed the British High Commission in Accra as well as contacting the charity Children and Family Across Borders, which it is believed put him in touch with lawyers at the International Family Law Group.
