Shock cases add to hate file

Disability Now is liaising with police and disability rights groups over our hate crime campaign as two more cases come to light, says Katharine Quarmby

Two cases have shocked Britain this month – both relating to disabled people.

Police in Leicestershire believe that a mother killed herself and her disabled daughter in October – after a sustained campaign of intimidation by local youths.

A police spokesman said that Fiona Pilkington, mother of Francesca Hardwick, who had learning difficulties, had reported “several incidents of anti- social behaviour”. He added: “As a force, we are asking questions of ourselves by reviewing the incidents Fiona reported to us.”


In another case, Anthony Anderson, who urinated on Christine Lakinski as she lay dying outside her home in July, has been sent to prison for three years.

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said that prosecutors had "no evidence that the defendant had verbally abused the victim"  or shown that he knew that she was disabled to make it an "aggravated sentence", although Anderson lived in the same street as Miss Lakinski.

However, there are signs of hope. Senior officers in the Metropolitan Police seem committed to improving how hate crimes are investigated.

Deputy assistant commissioner Alfred Hitchcock says that from next year the Met will simplify the way in which impairments are categorised. This should help to ensure that hate crimes will be “appropriately flagged”. 

The disability independent advisory group to the Met (DIAG) has pressed hard for change, partly because of the case of Albert Adams, a disabled man who was murdered in Greenwich by a “friend”, Jennifer Henry, in March 2005. Disability groups claim that the case was poorly investigated.

Anne Novis, co-chair of DIAG, says that the fact that Mr Adams had been complaining that his money was being stolen regularly was never investigated.

Following an internal Met inquiry, it emerged that despite neighbours reporting a violent dispute, police failed initially to treat the crime as a hate crime. Eventually it was classified as domestic violence and Ms Henry was convicted of murder. But it was never treated as a hate crime – which would have lengthened the tariff.

Anne Novis and Ruth Bashall, her co-chair of DIAG, are pressing for a review of all murders of disabled people in the capital to see whether they were hate crimes.

Ruth Bashall says: “It’s taken us three years to get this far on the flagging of crimes.

There is a willingness to deal with hate crime, but no strategy at all.”

The government, in the latest Queen’s Speech, has announced that inciting hatred against disabled people will become a separate crime. This may prove useful in isolated cases, but only if police officers are trained to use the law – which has not been the case with the sentencing provision so far.

As for the Disability Now campaign, we are asking victims and their families about their experiences. We are also discussing the campaign with the police, charities, disability rights groups and politicians.

Next month: how local groups have improved the way that disability hate crime is investigated.