[2024] UKUT 377 (AAC)

In oral evidence, the Appellant explained that he had first met the two girls, Girl A and Girl B, at a bus stop in the village when he was returning home from work. He initially denied having any romantic interest in the girls, but in response to questions from the Tribunal, confirmed that he had found Girl A “beautiful”, believed her to be older than she was and wanted to befriend her in the hope that he might, in time, establish a relationship with her. He wanted to see “where it would go.”.

He asserted that the girls had introduced him to the Snapchat social media application and that Girl A had been “chatting with him”, calling him “babe” and saying he was her boyfriend in chat messages in the app. He gave evidence that he had corrected her use of that terminology because she already had a boyfriend and provided a printout in support of this evidence from his phone. When she had fallen out with her boyfriend, the Appellant explained that he had intervened to try to get the boyfriend to apologise to her, so that Girl A would see that he was a good friend to her. He claimed that he had terminated the conversations with her, once he discovered that she already had a boyfriend.

The Appellant gave evidence that he believed that the allegations made against him had been made maliciously because of racist prejudice against him. He had been subject to abuse in a Snapchat voice call by an unknown male, had received racist text messages and was subjected to threats when he was on his way to work one dark evening, by a male and a female, but he did not know who they were.

The Appellant had produced in evidence transcripts of “chats” he had had with Girl A and other girls, during a period spanning from 25 January 2022 to the 7 February 2022. These were the conversations that he had been able to download but he did not think that they were a complete record of all the “chats” he had with Girl A. The letter submitted with the appeal application confirmed at paragraph 2 (page 8 of the bundle) that he had regular contact with members of the group using WhatsApp, Snapchat and Instagram social media platforms. The Appellant produced evidence of printed excerpts from his ‘chat’ but from only one of the platforms.

Relying on the dates provided by the Appellant in his handwritten annotations to the printed “chats”, there were a large number of exchanges on the 25 and 26 January 2022 which related to a falling out between Girl A and her boyfriend and the Appellant’s attempts to encourage them to reconcile. The exchanges continued during the next few days and the Appellant stated that he was not Girl A’s “baby” and that she should chat to her boyfriend. On the 4 February 2022, the Appellant contacted Girl A again and asked whether her relationship with her boyfriend had broken up and asking for details about who had ended the relationship.

The Appellant’s explanation for the sharing of information on social media was that when he had first met the girls, there was a group of two girls and three boys at the bus stop. The Appellant had been joined into a social media group with the boys because they shared an interest in football. He had only recently moved to the UK from Nigeria with his brother and was living on the outskirts of the village and working at the care home. The evidence of the Appellant was that he had not obtained the girls’ phone numbers directly from them but from the boyfriend of Girl A.

The Appellant gave evidence that he did not think it was fair that he was being criticised for his contact with the girls through social media, when they had been the ones to introduce him to Snapchat and had set up the group in which he was included. His evidence was that he had not asked the girl for her number but had obtained it from her boyfriend.

He produced evidence that he had asked the girls how old they were in the text messages shared between them. A transcript setting out a conversation with Girl A stated as follows:

“Girl A: “You told my mates you are going to chop their dicks off”

“Appellant’s response: Making you smile enough every day of your life will be my priority.

In my country we hate gay”

“Girl A: But that’s not right I like dick”