Thank you, you've been the first person who's listened and helped us to move forward with this. I now know who to report to and am more confident with the process.

Have you experienced hate crime or been targeted because of your race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity?

We can help by:

Listening to you and understanding what you are going through
Helping you to get information about your rights and options
Supporting you to report hate crimes if you want to
Helping you to be heard and deal with others (e.g. the police, housing, medical services)
Taking your side

I am so honoured to have been looked out for by you... Your unconditional help will be staying with me for as long as I am recovering from this ordeal.

Hate crimes include:

Verbal abuse
Harassment
Physical attacks such as hitting, punching, pushing or spitting
Threats of violence
Abusive phone or text messages or hate mail
Damage to property or graffiti
Online abuse, for example on Facebook or Twitter
A single incident, or repeated incidents from the same person or people (e.g. neighbours)

Who can use our hate crime advocacy service?

Anyone affected by hate crime who is aged 16 or over, and lives in Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, North or South Tyneside, or Northumberland.

I could open my heart and share my feelings because I knew there was help, and they would listen and not just shrug their shoulders. Great service

If you would like to make a referral for yourself or someone else to this or any of our other advocacy services please go to our Referral section

Hate Relationships

We have been involved in research by Durham and Northumbria Universities into the concept of 'Hate Relationships'. This suggests a new way of thinking about some experiences of hate where:

the perpetrators live near and are known to those they target
there are repeated experiences of hate that are not all physical violence
the impacts for those targeted are profound for their physical and mental health and wellbeing
victims and their families feel entrapped and isolated.

To find out more:

Read the research report Exploring ‘hate relationships’ through Connected Voice’s Hate Crime Advocacy Service
Watch our film Hate relationships: New understandings of hate crime, released in November 2021, to hear victim/survivors talk about their experiences of hate relationships, the impact on them and the difference support from our Hate Crime Advocacy service has made

Join us in our Hate Relationship pledges:

We are continuing to work with the research team at Durham and Northumbria Universities to develop a toolkit for practitioners to use to identify Hate Relationships and support people who are experiencing them. We will let circulate the toolkit widely when it’s finished, but in the meantime, you can join us in working together to stop hate relationships by doing one or more of the following

Find out more about Hate Relationships by watching the film and reading the research report (see links above)
Share the findings of the research with others
Adopt the term Hate Relationship and use it as a category for dealing with incidents if appropriate to your practice (e.g. in housing, health and criminal justice sectors
Join the dots: recognise individual incidents as connected and ongoing and recognise the institutional, geographical and structural contexts through which hate is reproduced and experienced
Refer people experiencing Hate Relationships to our Hate Crime Advocacy Service where appropriate
Encourage victims of Hate Relationships to recognise and report them
Become a Hate Crime Champion where you work and/or live by committing to do some of the above actions

Law Commission Hate Crime Report

We responded to the Law Crime Commission consultation about Hate Crime in 2020, giving our views based on our experience of supporting victims of hate crime. These included:

Whether the characteristics protected under hate crime legislation should be expanded to include sex or gender and ag
Whether the current legal position where the commission of a hate crime can be satisfied through proof that the defendant demonstrated hostility towards a protected characteristic of the victim should be maintained.

The Law Commission has published their report which includes recommendations to: