Sam Kerr faces trial in London over racially aggravated harassment charge
Sam Kerr, Australia's Matildas captain, is currently on trial in London for a charge of racially aggravated harassment. Her defence claims she feared for her life during a cab incident.
For more than half her life, Sam Kerr has been a member of Australia's most loved team, the Matildas, and for almost a quarter of her life, Kerr has been its captain. Now, as she sits in the middle of a criminal trial in a London court fighting a charge of racially aggravated harassment, which carries possible jail time, it is not certain Kerr will ever captain the country again.
It's not easy to reconcile the carefully curated Matildas brand and its scoring-machine-skipper on one hand with images of her climbing drunk out of the smashed back window of a cab and repeatedly calling a police officer "f---ing stupid and white" on the other hand.
In her defence, she stated, "I was terrified for my life" after the cab she was in started driving erratically, and its doors had been locked as its driver took her and her partner, Kristie Mewis, to the closest police station following an argument over the fare. Mewis had smashed the back window of the cab while it was still moving so they could get out. Kerr told the court they were being held "against their will".
Questioned by her lawyer in court on Wednesday, Kerr said she told the three officers at Twickenham on the night: "This is a racial f---ing thing" because "I believed they were treating me differently because of what they perceived to be the colour of my skin".
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