‘Let’s get talking about hate crime’

This week, after months of planning, Bristol Pride launched a campaign to help raise awareness of hate crime. The project, which has also allowed us to get people talking about same sex domestic violence, involves placing temporary chalk painted stencils on the streets around Bristol to raise awareness of where and what incidents have happened in our city.

Now, as people go about their everyday lives they will see where hate crime has impacted other people and has stopped them living their everyday lives.

The idea came from my work with Pride, working in equality and diversity in the city and from my own personal experience as a victim. This isn’t a personal mission, but the reaction I got from the perpetrators is what spurred me on.

I was the subject an onslaught of verbal abuse after parking my car in Brunswick Square, ready to go and meet friends in town. As I got out of the car three lads in their mid-twenties starting hurling abuse at my partner and me, using a rather colourful variety of homophobic slurs.

I was a bit gobsmacked. Stunned and upset, I challenged them, asking what if I was shouting racist abuse at them? “It’s different, it’s not the same,” they said, and then came: “that’s against the law”.

They knew that being racist was against the law but didn’t see homophobia in the same light or that it was treated in the same way by the police. So, I don’t have the human right not to be discriminated against because I am gay?

Don’t get me wrong, this was not some revelation to me. It’s not the first time I have been the victim to homophobia. In fact I could place at least another five markers over the city, but it doesn’t get any easier when it happens.

In fact, “casual” homophobia, transphobia and biphobia happens very often – so often that members of the LGBT+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) community can often feel it comes part and parcel. In working with Pride and as a previous LGBT+ caseworker for Bristol Hate Crime Services I have spoken to a lot of people who have experienced some form of prejudice against them for being LGBT+ and have just shrugged it off.

I was lucky I guess, it only being verbal abuse, but it still shook me to the core. It made me feel worthless and scared, but from working with Bristol Hate Crime Services and speaking to others I know it can be, and is often, a lot worse.

It can also be physical attacks, threats and harassment, intimidation or humiliation. It can include vandalism, graffiti or damage to property and increasingly in our digital age: abusive emails, cyber-bullying and trolling.

My experience made me realise that more needed to be done to raise awareness of what a hate crime is, for both those who might perpetrate a hate crime and for those who are victims of hate crime.

It’s not part of everyday life and that they should be reporting what is happening to them. For our campaign we did a call out for people to come forward and share their experiences, whilst tasking Bristol Hate Crime Services to get in contact with other victims and ask them to share their stories with us.

We hope that by telling people’s stories and giving people a picture of what is going on and showing how it has affected others we can get people talking and thinking about hate crime.

We’ve had a wide range of stories to tell. Heartbreaking stories such as an African single mother who has fled her country due to the violence as well as the domestic violence she had to endure (and her children had to witness) only to be now subject to harassment where she lives in South Bristol from young people due to her ethnicity.

But it’s not just adults either, young people are being bullied in schools that are not dealing with it. Children are being abused by parents outside of school.

We’ve highlighted a case of a lesbian couple holding hands being confronted by a heterosexual couple who started to harass and verbally abuse them. They now feel too unsafe to hold hands.

The sad story of a young gay man who is estranged from his family after coming out to them and has been sleeping rough since, until recently securing a place at a youth hostel.

He has then been subject to numerous attacks from fellow young people at the hostel and when approaching the staff, the staff have made jokes about him being gay, that he must have HIV and should not be helped. This person is thinking about going back to being a rough sleeper.

I feel that hate crime is a difficult thing to be highlighting. When speaking to journalists or some members of the public I keep getting asked: ‘Really, here in Bristol? But we’re so open.”

And don’t get me started on the use of the word “tolerant”. We’ve just been named the kindest city in the UK but hate crime is happening. Reports to Avon and Somerset Police were up 18 per cent last year and we know that LGBT+ hate crime is still horrendously under-reported.

One of the markers in Old Market is one that was really saddening to hear; it was from a couple who were harassed all the way home on the bus after being out at Pride day last year. You can imagine how the one day of the year you’re are allowed to feel safe and be yourself can come crashing down.

We can’t ignore what is happening in our city, we can’t just hope that perhaps it only happens to me or it was a one off. Let’s get talking about hate crime, let’s stand up to it when we see it, make sure you report it and together let’s hope we can stop it.

Daryn Carter is the director of Bristol Pride.