The 14-year-old boy has lost a court case against his parents after they moved him from London to Ghana for boarding school.
He claimed that his parents had deceived him into traveling to Africa by claiming it was to visit a sick relative, and that “there would have been no way I would have agreed to it” if he had known he was being sent to boarding school.
However, the London High Court also heard that his parents were concerned that he was being “groomed” into criminal activity.
“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,” he said in his written statement to the court.
Judge Mr. Justice Hayden of the High Court acknowledged in his ruling that “this is, in many ways, both a sobering and rather depressing conclusion.”
He expressed his satisfaction that the parents’ desire for their kid to relocate to Ghana was “driven by their deep, obvious and unconditional love of one another.”
He warned the boy could be further hurt if he went back to the UK.
The boy’s parents, he wrote, “believe and in my judgement with reason” that their kid has “exhibited an unhealthy interest in knives and at least peripheral involvement with gang culture.”
I did not want my son to be “yet another black teenager stabbed to death in the streets of London,” the boy’s father said to the judge.
The boy, who was born and raised in the UK, claimed that the Ghanaian school “never settled in” and “mocked” him.
He stated that he “could also barely understand what was going on and I would get into fights”.
The child said that he was “so scared and desperate” that he contacted the organization Children and Family Across Borders, which is thought to have connected him with attorneys at the International Family Law Group, and sent an email to the British High Commission in Accra.
“I am from London, England, and I want to go back home,” he wrote.
He said he had been “mistreated” at the school, adding: “I’m begging to go back to my old school.”
But according to the High Court, the boy’s parents sent him because they were concerned about his safety in London.
His mother said that his transfer to Africa was “not a punishment but a measure to protect him” in a statement.
