‘True reflection of hate crimes will not be apparent until legislation amended’

Hate crimes will remain underreported until legislation is amended to encourage victims to come forward, the chief commissioner of the Equality Commission has said.

Geraldine McGahey said she “fears” hate crimes are “greatly underreported”, with only about 2% of the complaints to the commission related to transgender or homophobic issues.

Ms McGahey made the comments at Belfast Pride Talks Back, an LGBTQ+ debate held in Common Market to coincide with Belfast Pride, which runs until Sunday.

She said: “Of all of the complaints and inquiries that we get to our advice line, only about 2% of those are related to transgender or homophobic issues. So we fear that there’s a great underreporting, and I think many reports have shown that there is.

“The rainbow project highlighted that 68% of people who have been a victim don’t report it. So in terms of the stats going up, I think it’s only one year, I think we need to see more to see a trend to see whether or not it’s really happening or whether it’s a blip in the system. But there has been a lot of effort put in by a lot of people, a lot of organisations, to support victims of crime, to be able to encourage them to come out and speak up and make their case.”

Ms McGahey said she believed people were nervous of reporting crimes for a number of reasons, adding: “There’s a fear of criticism, a fear of being further ostracised, a fear of inviting more crime, a fear or a belief that it maybe isn’t going to be investigated properly.”

She added: “The support services that are being established now help people believe that they will be listened to and that someone will take action but until hate crime legislation is really amended, and the various sanctions are made very clear as to what will be the outcome of hate crime, I don’t think we’re going to get a true reflection.”

Figures released by the PSNI earlier this year showed the number of homophobic and transphobic-motivated crimes recorded in the 12 months to the end of March this year was at its highest since collection of the data began in 2004/2005.

Homophobic incidents increased from 366 to 462 in the 12-month period to the end of March this year and crimes increased from 246 to 336.

Transphobic incidents decreased from 71 to 65, while the number of transphobic crimes rose from 34 to 42.