Stamping down on snarling city bigots

WELCOME to 21st Century York. In Sydney, a black athlete opens the biggest and best ever Olympics. In Cool Britannia, a lesbian former nun becomes the darling of the nation thanks to Big Brother. And in York... well, in York very little really changes.

We may be living in the heart of multi-racial and multicultural Britain - but one Asian York man still locks his family in the house when he goes to work every day for fear they will suffer racist attacks.

He forbids his children to go out on their own - they can't even play in the street - and gets up early after working well into the night at a city take-away so he can escort them to school.

The family have been spat at, verbally abused, physically attacked, their car vandalised and stones thrown through their windows - and the children's father fears even worse could happen.

But even though the terror has been going on for years, he will not name names to the police for fear of further repercussions.

His is not the only family to have suffered mindless abuse just because of the colour of their skin.

A Chinese doctor and his family recently decided to quit York before those harassing them turned violent.

And across the city, an Iranian family were so harassed and intimidated by their racist neighbours that the father moved his wife and children out for their own safety, and joined them soon after.

These incidents all happened in a city where even police would probably accept there are no-go areas for non-whites. And these are just the kind of families that North Yorkshire Police's Diversity Incorporating Safer Communities (Disc) team wants to reach.

Set up in the wake of the damning Lawrence Report into the Metropolitan Police's handling of the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, the team will record and monitor hate-motivated incidents throughout North Yorkshire with the ultimate aim of eradicating them through education, training and awareness.

Not only ethnic minorities suffer from hate crime. Anyone who is a bit different - gay, lesbian or even disabled - can be targeted.

The results can be frightening.

Annie (not her real name) says she and her partner 'Jane' were effectively hounded out of their Acomb home because they are lesbians.

She said she was verbally abused, her three children were threatened, and at one point, she claims, someone even tried to set fire to her house.

"We were living in fear, basically," she said. "It was terrible, absolutely terrible."

Annie, who is 34 and was born in York, admitted she had often thought of leaving the city altogether. "When I feel low, depressed, I think I just want to get away from here, and start again," she said.

She admits things have been better since she and her family moved to a different part of York a few years ago - although petty things still constantly reminded them they were different.

"A lot of people look at us like we've got horns growing out of our heads when we go out," she admits. "And there was a woman who stopped her little boy playing with my son. She told her son he wasn't allowed to stop here because we're gay." That problem, at least, has now been sorted out, she says.

Leonie Woodhall-James, who hit the headlines in York when she 'married' her partner Deborah at a York hotel in 1998, insists she loves living in the city.

But even so, she admits she was surprised by local attitudes towards lesbians and gays when she moved here from London to be with Deborah just over two years ago.

Certainly York and North Yorkshire are 'less tolerant' than London, she says - mainly because York is much smaller and less diverse than the capital. Even the sheer level of media interest in her marriage caught her by surprise, she admits.

She stresses she has experienced no personal unpleasantness. "I am what I am. If people don't like it, that's their problem, not mine. But I don't have any problems at all, and never have had." Nevertheless, she says, any initiative to tackle crime, race hate or homophobia is to be welcomed. "If the police are trying to tackle these issues, I applaud it."

Disabled people in York have also welcomed the moves.

Lynn Jeffries of the York Coalition of Disabled People, who has relied on a wheelchair to get around since a bad skiing accident several years ago, says her car was once blockaded by a gang of jeering primary school children she knows, who shouted at her to 'get out and walk'.

Even adults often hurl abusive comments at disabled people in the street, she says.

"It's horrible - especially when it's children," she says. "I find that quite frightening. If they're behaving like that to disabled people outside, what are they like with disabled kids in school with them?"

Any action to tackle the problem is to be welcomed, says Lynne. "If they start logging cases to show what's going on and raise the profile, that can only be a good thing."

One of the problems, police admit, is that hate crimes in the county are still under-reported. The Disc team hopes to encourage victims who suffer at the hands of bigots to come forward.

In the year until May, there were 54 incidents of harassment and violence towards ethnic minorities reported to police in York. But by some estimates, the actual number of incidents could be more than twice this number.

Many crimes go unreported because of cultural reasons, a mistrust of police and other authority figures or because previous complaints have led to nothing.

But if crime is not reported, arrests cannot be made, the police say - and the perpetrators cannot be held to account and prosecuted.

Peter Singh, development officer at the York Racial Equality Network (YREN), says he sometimes finds himself telling those who come to him for help that incidents of harassment and violence are not normal and should not be tolerated.

"For some people racial harassment is just a part of everyday life," he says.

"The perpetrators are often known to the victims but they fear repercussions if they report it to the police and so change their lifestyle to account for the victimisation. We are trying to raise peoples' confidence to report crimes."

Let's hope that Disc delivers a more tolerant approach to these problems.