Dudley man is Facebook friends with childhood racists

A man says he is Facebook friends with people who racially abused him as a child because he wants to educate them.

John Collins made a video "speaking out for the first time" since his childhood in the wake of George Floyd's death in police custody in Minneapolis.

He said the Facebook post prompted one former tormentor to apologise.

Mr Collins, from Pensnett Dudley, said he had seen online abuse and feared it might be hurting people in the same way he was targeted.

The 43-year-old said he was "the only black boy" in his area growing up, adding: "When I was younger, I didn't have a voice."

Birmingham is one of many cities to have seen protests following the death of George Floyd

Mr Collins said: "As I said in the video, a lot of people who abused me are on my Facebook - I've never stopped speaking to them because I realised they need education along the line."

He said his online message was to "explain what [abusers] did to me, and how that made me feel, and how what some people are doing now on Facebook might be doing the same to someone else".

"I did have one guy message me back after the video who said 'I know we may have had our differences when we were kids and I apologise'.

"I said 'listen, it is okay, we are grown now and all I ever want is for you to pass what you know to your child, so if they come across another child that looks like me in the playground, that child won't have to go through what I went through.'"

He said in the video: "I actually told a friend of mine 'yeah I've got people on my Facebook page who racially abused me when I was a kid and they were horrible to me' and he found it bizarre.

"But I said 'listen, it is not about going on a Facebook purge and deleting people', because if that was the case, I would have stopped talking to people and not giving them time of day."