Someone e-mailed me this article on the Sun website.
A shaken family told how they have been hounded out of three homes — for having ginger hair.
Kevin and Barbara Chapman and their four children have been targeted by thugs for three terrifying years.
The youngsters have been verbally abused and beaten up, while vandals have regularly smashed the family’s windows and sprayed hate-filled graffiti on the walls of their council homes.
Only this week, the slogan Gingers are gay
was daubed across one wall.
The Chapmans have moved home three times across their home city of Newcastle. But each time, the taunts and attacks have followed them.
Kevin says the local council even said he could dye his kids’ hair to halt the bullying on their estate.
The full-time dad, 49, says the abuse has become so bad that his 11-year-old son — also called Kevin — recently tried to hang himself.
Meanwhile the couple’s ten-year-old daughter Ryelle, and sons Daniel, also ten, and Jordan, 13, have all been badly affected.
Kevin Snr said: It started more than three years ago, when the kids started getting bullied by local lads over their hair colour.
They’ve been punched and kicked and thrown over a hedge. Every time they go out, these gangs have got to them.
We can’t even go to the shops two minutes away. The kids get all their stuff taken off them. You expect people to have a bit of fun about ginger hair, but this is just disgusting.
Dad Kevin, who also has five older kids, said Kevin Jnr got a black eye in the street last week.
He added: It’s shocking, he’s never even seen a life yet and he’s been driven to try suicide.
It was great when we moved home, but then we were spotted again. It seems there are a dozen families with relatives in each area. I was shocked when the council recommended hair dye.
Barbara, 44, who is separated from Kevin, said: It’s not fair on the kids putting up with this.
Newcastle City Council said housing staff were aware of the abuse — but denied suggesting hair dye.
A spokesman said: Mr Chapman suggested to one of our people he was going to dye it, and they said, You could always do that
. But it wasn’t a suggestion.
Oh, this made me so very angry, especially as someone sent it to me thinking it was funny! I was bullied at school because I was ginger, slightly chubby, wore classes and wasn’t particularly good at games (especially football) and so this story tweaks an emotional response from me.
I partially blame Catherine Tate (who is ginger herself) and the current crops of comedians who have latched onto ginger as the new and acceptable form of racism. It only takes Am I bovvered?
teenager Lauren from Tate’s show or a joke to me made in Little Britain for the playgrounds to be awash with this abuse — exactly as it was for my generation with Blue Peter and the late Joey Deacon.
If the family were being targeted because they were black, asian, jewish or muslim then the police would do something about it, but because it is the colour of their hair it is ignored.
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