Fatima was on a road trip with her friend, Yasmeen. She decided to stop at a lay-by to buy fruits from a fruit stall. As she parked in front of the fruit stall to ask the stall-owner a question, a man in his sixties aggressively drove behind her car and began repeatedly hooting at her.
He was under the impression that Fatima had jumped the queue. So, he got out of his car to confront her.
When he approached her car, he saw that she was a Muslim woman because she wore a hijab, and he began verbally abusing her. He shouted: “This country is civilised! If you want to be in this country, you need to learn to be civilised, otherwise go back to your country!”
Fatima got out of her car to video record the interaction and his number plate on her phone. When he spotted her doing this, he lunged at Fatima’s phone and threw it onto the road before swiftly leaving.
Fatima was left traumatised by the experience and struggled to sleep at night. She reported the incident to the IRU and we supported her by assigning an IRU caseworker to her case to liaise with the police throughout the police investigation.
The CPS decided to charge the man with racially aggravated intentional harassment and criminal damage of property, and he was later convicted.