Hate crimes against the disabled

I guess by my time in life and given the things that I have dealt with professionally then the despicable things that some human beings are capable of doing shouldn't really surprise me. In some ways then I wasn't surprised at the expose by BBC Panorama tonight on the hate crime that some disabled people are subject to. Not entirely surprised then perhaps, but nevertheless quite shocked. The disabled presenter had filmed secretly as he went out to a bar and showed the awful discriminatory remarks and threats of violence that he was subject to.

That was mild though compared to what some of the disabled people on the program had been putting up with. One poor wheelchair bound man had been firebombed out of his house by "anti-social" youths in his village. An elderly disabled lady and her daughter had been subject to over 60 episodes of attacks and harassment including one which they managed to film where a young local hooligan smashed every window in their disabled car. And the reaction of the police? Pathetic frankly. Their attitude appeared to be more to view the disabled lady and her daughter as a bit of a nuisance. The courts frankly arent much better.

Half the problem is that our politicians and the people in our criminal justice system are insulated from this kind of behaviour and so it is easy for them to dismiss it as mere "anti-social" behaviour rather than as the out and out criminality that it is. This Panorama program made very unsettling viewing.