MAYA Although Jama, 28, is at the height of her TV career, she had a rocky upbringing.
Her father was incarcerated for violent offences for the majority of her youth.
“But I calmed down when Maya was born when I was 26 and stopped going to the football on weekends so I could stay home with my family.”
Hussein and Sadie welcomed their son Omar two years after the birth of Maya.
He was sentenced to a year in prison in 1996 for glassing a guy with a bottle, when Maya was just two years old and her brother was a newborn.
“The cops came seeking for me and questioned Maya, ‘Where’s your dad?,'” Hussein recalled. Under the bed, she said.
“When I was in jail, Sadie said, ‘You can’t leave me at home with two little kids so next time you go in, it’s over’.
“In 1999, I was back inside and Sadie kept her word and I don’t blame her.”
What has Maya Jama said about her father?
The brand-new host of Love Island has spoken up a lot about her father’s traumatic history.
Maya affirmed that it was typical for her and expressed gratitude for her dad’s side of the family for their unwavering support.
She claimed that they took care to prevent her and her brother Omar from feeling left out.
At the age of 12, Maya made the decision to cease going to see her father in jail.
She said: “I remember me and my brother being put into the back of the car with a blanket for a long journey, and then we’d get searched by dogs on the way in and then talk to my dad across a table.
“There were sweets in the car, and it was a day out. It was only as I got older that I realised my friends’ families weren’t like mine, that they had dads who were around, not dads who were in prison.”
When Maya served as the subject of a documentary about having a violent father in 2017, the two got back in touch for the first time in decades.
The TV host talked about her early visits to her father’s prison cell in the interview.
“So I got to see a loving relationship, which I think is what can affect young women growing up without a dad—not experiencing love first-hand and seeing how a healthy relationship should be.
“Dad wasn’t around, but I had all the love I needed from elsewhere.”
