OHMYGOSSIP — Ashley Banjo increased his security after Diversity’s Black Lives Matter-inspired ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ backlash.
The 32-year-old dancer – who has Rose, two, and Micah, 14 months, with wife Francesca Abbott – feared for his family’s safety after he received thousands of death threats following the dance troupe’s infamous performance, which chronicled the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests.
He told the Daily Mirror newspaper: “After the routine there was so much negativity. At one point I think I was counting 70 to 100 tweets a minute. You get abusive messages and threats – ‘We know where you train, we know where you live’.
“We had to beef up our security system, just to make everyone who was home alone feel safer. When it was all kicking off my wife rang me and wanted to check how to set the alarm, what beams were where and where the keys were.”
The routine received 25,000 complaints to Ofcom but the watchdog did not uphold them, stating the routine’s “message was a call for social cohesion and unity”.
Ashley later thanked Ofcom, ITV and the trolls who sent the dance troupe racially-charged abuse online when the performance won the Must-See Moment prize at the BAFTA Television Awards over the weekend.
Accepting the award, he said: “This is so much more than just an award. I just want to say first, thank you to everyone who voted for us, it means so much. Thank you to everyone who stood by us. Every phone call, text, comment. You guys made a difference to what was a really dark time, being in a storm of 30,000 complaints – just a torrent of racially charged abuse, threats, all of it. It was a dark time but that support made a difference.
“And in a way I have to say thank you to the people that complained, to the people who put that abuse out there because you showed the truth, you showed exactly why this performance and this moment was necessary. But for all of those people, take a look.”
Source: VacationHunter.Online
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