Former Premier League player reveals he was forced into male prostitution

Former Watford player Al Bangura has revealed that he was into the United Kingdom as a child where he was also forced into male prostitution.

Al Bangura was born in  Sierra Leone but fled to Guinea aged 15 from here he came to the United Kingdom.

In an interview with on Today show on BBC Radio 4, the 27-year-old revealed that he was forced to flee Sierra Leone to Guinea because he was forced to succeed his late father's position as a leader of a cult known as Soko.

It was in Guinea where he met a Frenchman who brought him to the UK where he was forced into male prostitution.

Mr Bangura revealed that when he arrived in the UK, he was placed in a house when a group of men tried to rape him.

"All of a sudden I saw two or three guys come around me, trying to rape me and make me do stuff," Mr Bangura said in the interview.

"Because I was young and I was small, I just started screaming.

"They probably thought I knew what I was there for - obviously I know what I came over here for, I was here to play football."

Football became an escape route for the midfielder after he was taken in my the Home Office where he claimed asylum.

While living in a children's home in Haringey, Bangura started playing for local team were he was spotted by a Watford scout and signed for the club's academy.

We went on to play for Watford, Blackpool, Forest Green Rovers and Coventry City.

The 27-year-old also had few caps for Sierra Leone.

Now a free agent, Bangura May, is now working with the Premier League to raise awareness of the growing number of teenage players being tricked into leaving Africa for Europe.

According to statistics by Foot Solidaire, up to 15,000 African teenagers are taken abroad under false promises of a football career every year.

These traffickers pose as football agents and talent scouts, luring children from their homes in Africa with the promise of them signing for an European club.

Most of the times, parents of these children have to part with almost their life savings to pay these football agents and scouts.

These agents brings these boys to Europe and abandon them to their own fate.