On Thursday (6th of July) whilst I was out and about in Hereford on my daily walk I was on the receiving end of someone staring at me.
The incident has left me questioning once again what people think of me and others from the disabled community.
I have also been reminded that there is a real need for children and young people to be educated about what is and isn’t acceptable to do and say around our community.
I have spent so much time in recent years going into secondary schools across Herefordshire and sharing my experiences of being abused with students.
I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of days recalling many of the Hate Crime incidents that I have been involved over the last 3 years or so.
The number of incidents are staggering however this doesn’t define who I am as a member of our society.
The figures show that I have only actually been involved in a total of 9 incidents in the last few years and these have been both in person and online.
There is however one incident that will never leave my memory bank and that is the one I was involved in on Saturday July the 6th last year.
As many of you, my readers and followers will remember I was travelling back to Hereford from the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games by train with my best friend Dan.
When the 14:50, West Midlands Railway service from Birmingham New Street to Hereford approached Malvern Link station a gentlemen got off the service at the door next to where we were sitting.
He walked away from the train and returned seconds later to start banging on the window next to us, the senior conductor then asked him to step away from the train because it was ready to depart the station and continue its onward journey to Hereford.
This for some reason caused the gentlemen to get back on the service and head for myself and Dan, which I must say confused us quite a bit.
He then began to verbally abuse me and wanted me to uncross my legs, get out of my chair and off the train so that he could fight me.
When I just sat there there and said or did nothing he then decided to call me a P***y hole on several occasions in the 3 minutes between Malvern Link and Great Malvern stations.
The other passengers onboard the service then realised what was happening and somebody mouthed to us do we need assistance so Dan replied ” Get the guard” which they did much to our relief.
A few days after the incident I decided to report it to the British Transport Police (BTP) who carried out an investigation but weren’t able to act due to a lack of CCTV onboard the train and the quality of it at the Malvern station’s
In regards to the incident last Thursday I would like to ask the young person involved if they would like to take a picture of myself because it would last much longer than them staring at me and they could look at it when they wanted to.
I don’t like the fact that I have to resort to this method when dealing with incidents like this but it is better than crying about it.
I know that this is another very short blog but I wanted to share my experiences of this type of incident with you, my readers and followers.
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I would like to end by thanking all of my readers and followers who loyally read my blogs each week without fail, it doesn’t go unnoticed and it is appreciated.
Cam
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