Disabled people will only be protected from online abuse when they have “equal and fair” hate crime laws, a leading disabled campaigner has told MPs.
Anne Novis, chair of Inclusion London, told the Commons petitions committee that the abuse targeted at disabled people online was “just an echo” of what they experienced on the streets.
And she said that the law fails to protect them in both cases.
She was speaking to the committee as part of its investigation into online abuse of disabled people, which was launched following a petition set up by former model Katie Price which was signed by more than 220,000 people.
Price’s petition called on the government to create a new criminal offence covering online abuse, and to set up a register of offenders.
She set up the petition following years of disablist and racist abuse targeted at her teenage son, Harvey, who met members of the committee before the evidence session.
But Novis, who is an adviser on hate crime to the Metropolitan police, the Crown Prosecution Service and British Transport Police, said she did not want to see a separate offence for online abuse or the creation of a register of online offenders.
Instead, she said, disabled people just needed “an equal and fair hate crime law”.
Source: Disabled people need ‘equal and fair’ hate crime laws, MPs are told | DisabledGo News and Blog
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