How does hate and mate crime have a big impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities and autistic people?

General

28 July 2021

How does hate and mate crime have a big impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities and autistic people?

Kate Brackley works at Bild and is writing a series of blog posts. For this blog she talks about hate and mate crime and interviews people from Pathways Associates, Speakeasy Now and Sheffield Voices to get their views and experiences.

Kate’s own experiences

From my experience it’s a hard subject for me to explain how this has affected me as earlier in my life I have been a victim of hate and mate crime which made me feel awful. It has shown me that it can happen to people with learning disabilities and autistic people and it really is just a huge problem and it can ruin your life.

My personal experience started at school and continued during my adult life too and it has made me lose my confidence and my mental wellbeing. I was just not in my right frame of mind at all.

From my experience we do need to do a lot more to make people aware of hate and mate crime against people with learning disabilities and autistic people. It needs to be talked about and more needs to be done to protect people.

What is hate and mate crime?

Hate crime is a type of crime where the victim is targeted because of who they are. This might be because they have a disability, but it might also be because of their race, their sexuality or other reasons.

If someone commits this offence to people with disabilities they can be arrested and have a criminal record.

Mate crime is where someone pretends to be your friend and then takes advantage of you, by maybe making you give them money or making you do something.

I interviewed three people with learning disabilities about hate and mate crime and this is what they said:

Sean from Pathways Associates in Greater Manchester said:

People with learning disabilities need lots of support to make sure that they can keep themselves safe.

I have not been a victim of this type of crime but I have heard first hand stories from different people and have done lots of work around this.

People need to listen to people’s views and opinions; this is vital to make people aware of how serious this is.

There needs to be lots of awareness out in the world of it (hate crime) so that we can all challenge this kind of behaviour.

Julie from Speakeasy Now said:

It affects all our lives, our mental health, our wellbeing and can mean you lose your ambition and your self-confidence too.

Words hurt people and not realising that people are scared of this.

How has this been affecting people’s lives?

Mary from Sheffield Voices, supported by Disability Sheffield:

Mary has been a victim of hate crime, it made her feel scared and really affected her confidence. She didn’t want to go out of the house for a long time.

Kate’s reflection:

We like to think that we are all included in our local communities, we believe everyone should be treated the same as everyone and everyone to respect everyone.

If people believe that we are different and bully us this is not right and it’s those people who should be brought to justice.

I have spoken to quite a few different people to write this blog and I am shocked at how this has affected not just my life, but so many others.

Why is being treated the same as everyone else important to people with learning disabilities and autistic people?

It is really important to people with learning disabilities and autistic people as we just want to be included in the big wide world and our local communities.

We can’t be living in fear just because people think that we are seen as different and it’s about being fair and we should be given the same rights as everybody else.

We do need to highlight how serious this is to us and that people’s lives are at stake and we need to take this into account.

There needs to be more awareness of hate and mate crime. It’s hard to know how to get the message across.

This needs to be more recognised and what the consequences can be for people. It’s harder to prove the evidence of hate and mate crime that is done online, such as social media.

What changes and improvements can be made so people are more aware about the impact of hate and mate crime and the effect it has on people’s lives?

There are a lot of changes and improvements that have to be made so people are aware of how serious this can be on people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

It’s important to listen and to help people to speak up if they are experiencing hate or mate crime.

Julie from Speakeasy Now said:

Awareness of this needs to start by talking to people in all aspects of education like schools, colleges, even universities, to find out how they all feel about hate and mate crime and find out their views and opinions so when they are adults we all hope that with the awareness of this area that they remember what they have learnt and to make hate and mate crime disappear and people with learning disabilities and autistic people have a better life and not live in fear any more.

She thought that there could be more information in easy read not jargon; there needs to be access to other formats like braille, and audio etc.

Sean from Pathways Associates in Greater Manchester:

Sean thought this was a good idea. Hate crime is getting the right support and in groups as well as this helps. People need help to understand hate and mate crime and how to make the right decisions and choices.

He said that we need to show that we all care for one another in the community, we need to show more respect and to be polite. Although we have a disability we still need to be polite, just the smaller things makes a big difference.

Mary from Sheffield Voices, supported by Disability Sheffield:

Mary said that it is really important to remember that you need to keep telling people about this as the more the people you tell the better chance that we can make everyone aware of how serious this is.

People can learn from hearing someone’s experience as this will help hearing it first-hand.

Kates reflection:

Everyone agreed that there should be lots of support to help to report these crimes. Speak to someone that you trust and remember it is not your fault.

Reporting it to the police helps as these are crimes and the more it is reported the better. Police need to take it seriously and people need to be trained in hate and mate crime.

We need to talk and listen to people and their stories as these are vital as this will form the training that everybody needs to really hit home.

Thank you to all of the people who have contributed their time and talked to me about this.