Tackling disability hate crime: some positives
Richard Lawrence, who has a learning disability and has been a victim of hate crime, writes for Channel 4 News on his experience and how working together can tackle the problem.
My name is Richard Lawrence. I have a learning disability and I work at the charity Mencap.
Two years ago me and my fiancée were going to our day centre. All of a sudden, a gang of school kids started throwing stones at us. I had seen the kids before and they had often called me names but they had not thrown stones before. They picked on us because of our learning disability and they were being racist to my fiancée because she’s white. This made me feel upset, angry and confused.
I still find it difficult to go out of the house sometimes. That’s how bad it was.
I called the police and I told them what had happened. They turned up at my door and I explained to the police what had happened to us. The police used jargon words and we did not understand what they were saying.
The police treated it as anti-social behaviour. I think they should have treated it as a hate crime. I felt hopeless because the police didn’t arrest anyone. But I felt the gang of boys went too far. I felt frustrated about everything that had happened.
Me and my fiancée told a member of staff from the day centre what had happened to us. They said I should get a mediator. I phoned the mediation centre and a woman called Elena helped me. She understood about learning disabilities. She explained she would contact the school and set up a meeting with me and the gang of boys. She said she would let me know what is going on and visit me and my fiancée at my house.
The mediator came to the meeting at the school and I explained to the boys that I have a learning disability and how it affects me and my fiancée. She supported me at the meeting. The meeting was a success because the school listened to my side of the story. The boys listened as well. We agreed that next time the boys saw me they would go their way and I would go my way.
The boys have not done anything to me since we had the meeting at the school. But I still find it difficult to go out of the house sometimes. I look around me more because I’m worried it might happen again. That’s how bad it was.
Mencap has worked a lot with the police so the police get better at dealing with learning disability hate crime, which is very important to me. If it happened again to me, I would ask the police to not using jargon words, to keep me updated, and to not treat disability hate crime as anti-social behaviour.
For more information on Mencap’s Stand by me campaign against disability hate crime, please visit the website.