Justin Fashanu for "BBC Radio 1". Fashanu was the subject of an early internet meme in 1996 when the BBC opened their poll for the Sports Personality of the Year award to e-mail votes for the first time. An online campaign was organised among students in an attempt to enable him to win the title, but his votes were excluded from the final tally by the show's production team. In March 1998, a seventeen-year-old claimed to police that he had been sexually assaulted by Fashanu after a night of drinking. Homosexual acts were illegal in the US state of Maryland at the
Justin Fashanu of London Cemetery and Crematorium. John Fashanu later regretted some of the comments he made when his brother first came out. In an interview with TalkSPORT in 2012, John Fashanu subsequently claimed his brother was not gay and was merely an attention seeker. Fashanu was listed at number 99 in the Top 500 Lesbian and Gay Heroes in "The Pink Paper". In March 2009 a football team, The Justin Fashanu All-stars, was named at a special event in Brighton, supported by the FA. The team, named in his honour, was created by the Justin Campaign, which is a campaign against