By Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) -Australia women’s soccer captain Sam Kerr went on trial in a London court on Monday, accused of racially abusing a white police officer after a drunken dispute with a cab driver.
Kerr, who plays for Chelsea in the Women’s Super League, told the officer Stephen Lovell: “You guys are fucking stupid and white.”
Kerr, who has Indian ancestry, accepts saying those words but has pleaded not guilty to one count of racially aggravated harassment. Her lawyer argued she was making a comment about power and privilege.
The 31-year-old sat in the dock at Kingston Crown Court as prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones told jurors that she and her partner Kristie Mewis, who plays for West Ham United, called a taxi in the early hours of Jan. 30, 2023 after a night out.
“Their cab journey did not go well,” Emlyn Jones said.
“The cabbie ended up phoning the police to complain about their behaviour, reporting that they were trying to smash a window”.
The cab driver took them to a police station instead of Kerr’s home, after which she made the comment about Lovell’s ethnicity, Emlyn Jones said.
He added that there was no dispute over what Kerr said, meaning jurors had to decide what she meant and how it made Lovell feel.
SOCIAL COMMENT?
Kerr’s lawyer Grace Forbes said that Kerr’s words did not make her a criminal. “The law is a little more nuanced, a little more human than that,” she argued.
“Sam Kerr did not feel hostility to the officer because he is white. The words were a comment, we say – however poorly expressed – about positions of power, about privilege and about how those things might colour perception.”
Kerr is one of the world’s top female strikers, having scored 199 career goals across the Women’s Super League, Australia’s W-League and the National Women’s Soccer League.
She is also Australia’s all-time top scorer with 69 goals in 128 appearances, but has been sidelined since suffering an anterior cruciate ligament injury in January 2024.
Her trial is expected to conclude this week.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin, Editing by William James and Andrew Cawthorne)
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