The video of Hayden, then 24, abusing a Frenchwoman on a bus clocked up 4.7 million views around the world. Photo / Supplied
The video of Hayden, then 24, abusing a Frenchwoman on a bus clocked up 4.7 million views around the world. Photo / Supplied
The Melbourne bus passenger who filmed the first viral video of a racist rant on public transport has faced the man he shamed, four years after the footage gained 4.7 million views almost overnight.
In the confronting video Mike Nayna uploaded to YouTube, Hayden Stewart is heard screaming at ayoung Frenchwoman: "F***ing stop there ay, you bitch. C***. I'll f***ing box cut you right now, dog".
"Yeah come on c*** get off, f***ing ding, look at ya."
Hayden, 24, was backing up a man named Graham, who told the woman to "speak English or die" and threatened to cut off her breasts with a filleting knife.
Graham called her group of friends, who were singing in French at the back of the bus, "f***ing black c***s" and told them "300 years of history should have told them that they're f***ing slaves".
As Hayden walked away with his then-girlfriend, pushing their six-month-old daughter in a pram, he smashed in the bus window.
"I'll put a bullet in their heads, racist scum"
The shocking video made news across the world, with Mike discussing what he'd witnessed on national TV in the UK, France, the Netherlands and the US.
Viewers took to social media to express their disgust at Hayden's behaviour, with many threatening to kill him and his child. "I'll put a bullet in their heads racist scum," read one threat.
"Remember these faces and if you see them stomp their teeth into their ugly mullets," ordered another social media user.
Both Hayden and Graham did jail time over the incident in 2014, with Graham losing his job in construction and sleeping on the streets after he was evicted from his home.
Mike grew disturbed at the vigilante mob he'd created.
"It was horrible," he told news.com.au. "I started feeling really guilty. You've got people having mental breakdowns caught on camera then scrutinised. I was wondering what was happening to these people."
The aspiring filmmaker, now 32, had created viral videos before. Uploading the footage to YouTube, he had hoped it would stop the men he had filmed "turning themselves into the heroes of the story" and embarrass them.
"My main motivation was personal," he admits. "I felt humiliated. I guess it was revenge, I didn't think that at the time but I came to that conclusion after speaking about it for a few hours on TV."
Graham, who racially abused Fanny Desaintjores and her friends, lost his job, served time in jail and ended up evicted and sleeping on the streets after the video went viral. Photo / Supplied
"He looked like he expected me to hit him"
Four years on, Mike saw Hayden on the street in Melbourne, and screwed up the courage to approach him.
"He looked like he expected me to hit him," Mike says. "I apologised, he apologised. It was a really strange conversation. 'I'm the guy who made your life hell'."
Mike learnt that Hayden was on his way to rehab - he had turned to drugs and suffered with mental health issues. He had developed anxiety over walking around the streest, he reveals in an interview Mike filmed for a documentary on his experience.
"People picked me out, 'there's that bloke, teach him a lesson'," Hayden says.
He was "embarrassed, ashamed, guilty, everything," he told Mike.
"I've got me half-year-old daughter with me in a pram screaming abuse at a lady at the back of the bus, it didn't look good. I'd only been out three weeks so I was still kind of in that mindframe of jail mode, you've got to threaten them before they get you first, you've got to make sure they're not going to come after you, you're angrier and scarier.
"I wasn't in control ... I reacted the wrong way."
"It went way too far"
Mike, who is still in contact with Hayden, feels guilty for what happened to him afterwards.
"It got pretty bad for him," says Mike. "He wouldn't blame the video, but look at the timeline.
"It went way too far. I don't think anything positive happened as a result of that video. If anything, it solidified his feeling of being on the outside.
"This person's already cast aside and doesn't feel part of culture, to push him further out and have him feel people are looking down at him, I do feel responsible.
"But he's an adult now. We don't completely absolve him."
Mike doesn't believe Hayden is racist, "not at all" and thinks Graham was "playing to the crowd" when he shouted at the young French woman and her rowdy friends on the rail replacement bus at the end of a long, hot summer's day.
"It was just excitement," says Mike. "The racial element was a small part of it. Obviously there's some kind of racism in these guys, but it's the same with everyone I think.
"We've expanded the definition of racism so far it encompasses people going about their daily lives."
Mike couldn't track down the older man for the documentary. He has "gone off the grid".
