Jayda Fransen on trial for alleged hate crimes, which woman says caused daughter to be stillborn

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A woman has told a court she blames the deputy leader of Britain First for the death of her daughter, who was stillborn, after she was subjected to racist abuse in her home.

Jayda Fransen is accused of hate crimes alongside the leader of the far-right group, Paul Golding.

They were arrested over the alleged distribution of leaflets and online videos, which were posted during the trial of three Muslim men and a teenager, who were later convicted of rape.

Fransen went to the Kent home of one of the defendants, Tamin Rahmani, and shouted abuse through the front door, Folkestone magistrates court heard.

His partner, Kelli Best, said she was alone with their two children, aged three years and 18 months, during the incident on 9 May last year.

She told the court she was pregnant at the time and blames Fransen for the death of her daughter.

Giving evidence from behind a screen on Tuesday, Best said: “She [Fransen] was making racist remarks: ‘Dirty Muslim rapist, come out, we’re not going to leave until you’re gone, come out. Dirty scumbags.’

“It was directed at Tamin because she thought he was in there, but he wasn’t. It made me feel very anxious, I didn’t go outside for a long time.

“I was also pregnant at the time it happened; two days after, I started to bleed heavily and lost my daughter, she was stillborn. I blame Jayda Fransen because there was no other reason for it to happen.”

She said her son still gets scared when anyone knocks on their door. “He would make remarks saying ‘I’m not dirty’; it’s really affected him,” she said.

On a video played in court, Fransen could be seen banging on the door and shouting: “Come out and face me you disgusting rapist, come on.”

Best sat shaking and crying in the witness stand as the footage was played.

Fransen is charged with four counts of religiously aggravated harassment and Golding with three counts. The pair, from Penge, south-east London, deny the allegations.

Fransen was previously convicted of racially aggravated harassment relating to an incident in January 2016 involving a so-called Christian patrol, the court heard.

She approached a woman in Luton and told her she “had been hidden because your men can’t control their urges” and “you cover because you don’t want to be raped”, the prosecutor, Madeleine Wolf, said.

Golding has a previous conviction for harassing a person in their home relating to an incident in January 2015, the court heard.

He told a woman living there that her son was a terrorist and “we want to evict him, we don’t want him to live there”, Wolf said.

The details were given during a bad character application by the prosecution, which was denied by the judge, Justin Barron.