ARDROSSAN-BASED charity The Scottish Centre for Personal Safety held a Personal Safety training day with local blind and visually impaired people to mark the launch of National Hate Crime Awareness Week 2017.

Hate crimes are crimes that are motivated by some kind of prejudice. They are crimes where the victim is targeted simply because they have a particular characteristic or are a member of a particular social group, which the perpetrator has negative views or beliefs about.

Alan Bell from the centre said: “Our charity has been providing free Personal Safety training to groups and individuals who are regularly targeted by hate crime.

“We run classes for people with low or no vision each week and, of those taking part, almost all have experienced verbal abuse and over 80 per cent have been physically assaulted. These assaults have ranged from being spat on, to being pushed and shoved, to being tripped up to see how blind they are and in one case, having windows smashed. “And the sad thing is that almost all hadn’t reported these attacks to the police because they were a regular occurrence to them.”

Alan added: “We are offering free of charge personal safety courses to people with low or no vision, the LGBTI community and people from black or minority ethnic backgrounds. If anyone runs a group which falls into any of these categories, please get in touch with us. We want everyone to know that hate crime does not have to be tolerated.”