Report and support options for sexual assault, harassment, bullying, hate crime and hate incidents
Care and Concern
Talk in person about where to get support and how to report.
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Hate incidents are acts of violence or hostility directed against someone because of who they are or who someone else thinks they are. The term includes criminal offences (hate crimes) and non-criminal acts.
Hate incidents are associated with, for example: racism, faith-based and religious hatred, antisemitism, anti-Muslim hatred / Islamophobia, hatred or refugees, discrimination against asylum seekers and Gypsy-Roma and Travelling communities, ageism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia and violence against women.
The perpetrator of a hate incident may well target an individual or group of people because of several characteristics e.g. a Muslim woman may face abuse because of her gender, faith and ethnicity.
A hate incident is defined as a hate crime when it involves an offence which breaks the law. There is a range of legislation that can apply to hate crime and hate incidents (Public Order Act 1986; Protection and Harassment Act 1997; Criminal Law Crime and Disorder Act 1998; Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006; The Equality Act 2010).
An hate incident can be a classified as a hate crime if it is carried out because of hostility or prejudice based on: disability, race, religion, transgender identity or sexual orientation. Incidents motivated by other personal characteristics may not be classified as a hate crime under law though the police are still able to take action and prosecute.
Hate speech is any communications (in person or online) which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence against any individual or group because of any protected characteristic.
Examples of hate speech include:
Expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person's colour, race, disability, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation is against the law. You can report any communication which is threatening or abusive, and is intended to harass, alarm, or distress. The penalties for hate speech include fines, imprisonment, or both.
The terms ‘harassment’ and ‘bullying’ and are often used interchangeably. Examples include:
It may be a single act with enduring consequences or a repeated act or behaviour. It can be perpetrated by an individual or group of people. It can be enacted even if the perpetrator did not intend to cause harm. There tends to be a power imbalance, for example, a senior person towards a junior person. Harassment and bullying can take place off and online.
Classifying behaviours as harassment and bullying is not always clean-cut. Quite often, harassment and bullying isn’t recognisable and may occur without anyone but the victim and the perpetrator knowing about it.
Harassment, as defined by the Equality Act 2010, is a crime if it is “unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic” (age, gender reassignment, race, sex, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation) “which has the purpose or effect of violating an individual’s dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the individual.” Significantly, you don’t need to possess a protected characteristic to be the victim of harassment. For example, you could be subjected to homophobic slurs, when you yourself are heterosexual.
Unlike harassment, there is no legal definition of bullying. Nonetheless, it may be considered a criminal offence under a range of acts. For example, bullying may be considered a hate crime if it is “committed against someone because of their disability, gender-identity, race, religion or belief, or sexual orientation”.
Sexual harassment is any unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature that makes you feel distressed, intimidated or humiliated. It can take lots of different forms. It can include or be called sexualised bullying.
Sexual harassment can include:
Although sexual harassment can happen anywhere, it is common in the workplace and likewise in an educational setting.
Sexual harassment is a form of unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010. The law says it’s sexual harassment if the behaviour is either meant to, or has the effect of: violating your dignity, or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment.
You don't need to have objected to a certain kind of behaviour in the past for it to be unwanted and constitute harassment.
Online hate is the use of information and communication technologies by an individual or group to repeatedly cause harm to another person. Social media, in particular, in being a normalised and integrated part of everyday life, is becoming a more prominent vehicle of hate crime, harassment, bullying and stalking.
As technology develops, social network sites evolve, and online usage continues to enter every aspect of our lives, the line between on and off-line hate becomes more and more merged.
Abuse may occur solely in the digital realm or solely off-line. Alternatively, the abuse may form part of a wider campaign targeting individuals both on and off-line. For example, online hate speech may be a part of wider pattern of harassment and abuse that is happening in other areas of someone’s life, for example a neighbour that is being targeting at their home and online.
Perpetrators may choose to commit acts of hate online for a number of reasons, such as the conception that it is not recognised as a hate crime, or belief that it will not be reported.
The reality is that the government adopts the legal principle that what is illegal offline is also therefore illegal online. Thus, reporting online hate incidents will be treated by the police in just the same way as hate incidents which occur in the physical world.
For further information, see the Crown Prosecution Services’ guidelines on prosecuting cases involving communications sent by social media.
Revenge pornography is the disclosure of private sexual photographs and films without the consent of an individual who appears in the photograph or film with the intent to cause distress to the individual. These images are generally produced either consensually (for example by the victim in a private relationship) or non-consensually (for example by surveillance or hacking). Not all acts of revenge pornography are committed for revenge purposes. Some acts of revenge pornography are enacted as a means of extortion, intimidation or for the pleasure of causing annoyance in others.
Revenge pornography is becoming more prominent with the growing popularity of sexting. Sexting refers to nude or semi-nude sexual or sexually suggestive images or videos sent and received through mobile phones and social media apps. Sexting is an acceptable online activity when it takes place between consenting adults within adequate privacy settings, but problems arise when images sent are subsequently distributed online without consent of the creator. When these images are distributed without consent, then sexting becomes revenge pornography.
All incidents of revenge pornography are now classed as a criminal offense in the UK.
Revenge porn was made a specific offence in the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015. The Act specifies that if you are accused of revenge porn and found guilty of the criminal offence, you could be prosecuted and face a sentence of up to two years in prison.