British speaker who was attacked in Spain and lost everything now homeless in the UK

Richard Martin worked his entire adult life: he paid his taxes, earned three degrees, and became a university professor in Spain after moving to Seville 12 years ago.

But his life changed overnight when he was robbed at gunpoint and ultimately lost everything.

The 53-year-old had to spend the next six weeks sleeping rough where he thought 'he was going to die' until he could return home to the UK with help of a charitable association. But what he didn't expect when he returned to the comfort of Brighton was that he would still be homeless and begging.

After weeks of struggling to secure temporary accommodation, Richard now hopes to shine a light on the harsh reality faced by expats returning home with nothing and has criticized the systems in place to be able to receive government support , saying he was 'constantly hitting the brick walls'.

Richard spent weeks on the streets of Seville and now Brighton where he had to beg for money (

Picture:

Sussex News and Photos)

The brutal attack happened on November 15 last year, when Richard was in the process of moving house.

Two men approached him in a bus shelter at night and stabbed him in the back, hitting him in the face and ribs, which left him battered and bruised and without his four front teeth.

They stole his phone, his wallet and the keys to the storage unit he used to store his belongings.

When he returned to the unit with the police the next day, everything was gone, including his laptop which contained a decade of work, as they withdrew his last £1,200 from his bank account.< /p>

He had nowhere to go but a bench in a nearby park, where he tried to sleep for the next 10 days, but feared he would die there.

"I needed a safe place to sleep, otherwise I thought 'maybe I'm going to die, maybe my health is going to collapse'," Richard told the Mirror.

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