A charity has teamed up with Somerset County Council to raise awareness about disability hate crime.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

OpenStoryTellers, based in Frome, has created a series of videos about it after researchers found victims often failed to recognise it was a crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said people with disabilities were also vulnerable to “mate crime” when victims are befriended by someone who later exploits or manipulates them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The videos are available to view on the council’s website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avon and Somerset Police recorded 473 disability hate crimes between April 2021 and March, but it said the true figure could be considerably higher, because of underreporting issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlotte Woodall, from OpenStoryTellers, told BBC Radio Somerset: “Some of our members didn’t really know very much about hate crime and disability hate crime and actually we did a lot of research with our members to find out what people did know.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Nothing will happen’<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The charity said it hoped the campaign would empower people with disabilities, whether that was a physical or a learning disability, to understand hate crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Quite often people are targeted and they are victims and they don’t do anything about it – possibly because they’re scared, possibly because they think ‘well nothing is going to happen anyway’, or possibly because they don’t recognise it is an actual crime,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben Harris, from Frome, who has both hearing and sight loss, described an incident where someone had thrown a drink at him from a moving car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said it had not occurred to him at the time to report it, adding: “I was able to brush it off, but it did make me angry”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ali Gunn, from the south London-based charity United Response, which supports people with learning difficulties, said: “The experience of ‘is this a hate crime?’ is something that we hear quite often.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a 41% rise in recorded hate crimes between 2021 and 2022 in England and Wales according to figures released earlier this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms Gunn said: “Either reporting procedures have got better, people are more aware of how and when to report a hate crime or it indicates that hate crime is on the rise, but either way it does indicate there is a problem there that needs addressing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This report was based on interviews carried out by Carrian Jones for BBC Radio Somerset<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Published1 day ago A charity has teamed up with Somerset County Council to raise awareness about disability hate crime. OpenStoryTellers, based in Frome, has created a series of videos about it after researchers found victims often failed to recognise it was a crime. It said people with disabilities were also vulnerable to “mate crime” when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n