They used to pick on her non-stop, calling her names, putting her on horses she didn’t have the ability to ride. “At another yard, there was a girl people were hateful to. There were people watching and they left us there after and went off to watch TV. Then they rubbed everything they could find into us, into our private parts, horse shit all over us, and hosed us down with cold water. “They chained us to a fence, arms and legs spread out in a star shape and naked, put washing-up liquid on our heads so it would go in our eyes. “Two senior lads came and got us out of the hostel,” he says. In addition to enduring regular bullying by the valet, the former rider says he witnessed bullying of other staff members at stables where he worked and was subjected to a humiliating initiation ceremony at a leading yard where he started his career in racing as a teenaged stable lad.

I said: ‘I’ve just been assaulted,’ and they just did nothing.” “One time, I was doing a really low weight, so I was very weak as well, and in the washing machine room he pinned me up against one of the machines, grabbed me by the testicles and was squeezing really hard and said: ‘I bet you like that, fat fucker, don’t you?’ And it was systematic, he was threatening me all the time, every time I went into the weighing room. “I had faeces put in my bag regularly, equipment spat on, I was referred to only as ‘fat fucker’ or ‘fatty’, I was never called by my name. “He took a big dislike to me and he just generally made my life hell, every single time I was in the weighing room,” he says of the valet.

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