The mother of a toddler who was racially abused in west Belfast has labelled the attack on her young son “child abuse”.
The woman, who lives in the Ballymurphy area, said she was highlighting what had happened to her 18-month-old son Ryan in a bid to encourage other victims of hate crime to come forward.
The mother, who has been identified only as Lisa, said her son was racially abused near Milltown Cemetery on the Falls Road on Monday.
She said she was walking up the road at around 12pm with Ryan in the pram when “a woman came close to me and I thought she was a passer-by, and screamed all over the road the n-word”.
“I said to her, excuse me – she continued to walk on and I was expecting a confrontation,” she said.
“She was about 45-50 and not a care in the world, she just walked on. It was horrible. I put the brake on the pram and followed her up the road a bit but returned to the child. I wanted to challenge her.”
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback programme, Lisa, who revealed that five of her six children had experienced racial abuse, said: “What I’m afraid of is people become victims and it becomes normal and they become numb to the fact.
“It isn’t acceptable. It’s amoral and it’s a criminal offence. It’s child abuse.”
Police are treating what happened as “a racially motivated hate incident” and have appealed for information about the woman involved, who is described as being in her late forties/early fifties and 5ft 7in, with auburn, shoulder length hair.
She was wearing a long skirt or maxi dress which was blue/purple.
