What You Didn't Know About Justin Fashanu Death, Cruel Thing Happened To John Fashanu Brother

In 1998, the footballer Justin Fashanu was discovered dead in east London. His body was discovered by a passer-by in a lock-up garage in Shoreditch, east London.

: Justin Fashanu was Britain's first gay professional footballer.

Justin died by suicide in 1998, eight years after publicly coming out after a newspaper threatened to out him.

He faced intense homophobia.

Today would have been his 61st birthday.

— Show Racism the Red Card

He was arrested by authorities in 1998 when a seventeen-year-old boy accused him of sexual abuse.

On 3 April 1998, he was charged and a warrant was issued for his arrest in Howard County, Maryland.

He went to England, where he murdered himself fearing a fair prosecution because of his homosexuality, according to his suicide note.

Fashanu committed suicide in London in May 1998, confessing in his death note that the relationship was voluntary.

He was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the National Football Museum in 2020.

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After a night of drinking, a seventeen-year-old reported to authorities that Fashanu sexually abused him.

At the time, homosexual acts were outlawed in the US state of Maryland, and the teen claimed that the act was not consensual but was conducted as he awoke.

The alleged assault took place in Fashanu's apartment in Ellicott City, Maryland. On April 3, police questioned Fashanu about it, but he was not arrested.

Fashanu had already gone to England when the police arrived at his flat with a warrant to arrest him on allegations of second-degree sexual assault, first-degree assault, and second-degree assault.

He was discovered hanging in an abandoned lock-up garage. He denied the claims in his suicide note, claiming that the sex was consensual and that he fled to England because he thought he couldn't get a fair trial because of his homosexuality.

In 1990, Blackpool player Justin Fashanu became the first participant to come out as gay.

'I would say that more than 25 per cent of football is gay. It's got to be higher than average. It's a very physical, closed world, a man's world, and you form deep bonds with people you hardly know.' - Justin Fashanu, 1993.

— Evan Powell

He is still the only male footballer who has revealed his sexuality while playing professionally in the highest ranks three decades later.

He claimed at the time that he knew 12 other gay or bisexual Premier League footballers.

Justin was also the first black player to be signed for £1 million by a club, as well as the first notable black person in the United Kingdom to come out as LGBT+.

Despite having consensual intercourse with a teenager across the United States, he committed suicide in London owing to his fear.

In England and Wales, same-gender weddings became legalized in 2013.

Fashanu was born in the United Kingdom to a Nigerian lawyer and a Guyanese nurse named Pearl.

He and his younger brother John were sent to a Barnardo's care home when their parents divorced.

He and John were adopted by Alf and Betty Jackson when they were six years old and raised in Shropham, Norfolk.

In the 1970s, he attended Attleborough High School, where he developed his football talent and was spotted by Norwich City scout John Sainty during a school match versus Thetford Grammar School in 1974.

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