Get help if you’ve experienced a hate incident or hate crime
If you or someone you know has experienced a hate crime or hate incident, you can get help from hate crime support services.
You can also report it to the police. If you don’t want to talk to the police, you can ask an independent organisation to report it for you at a third party reporting centre.
If the incident happened at your home, school or workplace, you can also speak to your landlord, school or employer.
If you’re not sure if you’ve experienced a hate crime, you can check if something is a hate crime.
Get help from hate crime support services
If you’ve experienced any hate incident or hate crime, you can get support from Victim Support Scotland. Find out how to get support on the Victim Support Scotland website.
There are some national organisations that can help you if you’ve experienced a specific type of hate crime - for example, a transphobic hate crime.
If you're LGBTQ+
If you’ve experienced a homophobic or transphobic hate incident or hate crime, you can get support from galop on their website.
If you're Jewish
If you’ve experienced a crime and you think it’s because you’re Jewish, you can report it to Community Support Trust (CST).
CST can report the crime to the police for you.
If you're Muslim
If you’ve experienced an Islamophobic hate incident or hate crime, you can get support from Tell MAMA on their website.
If you're Gypsy, Roma or Traveller
If you’ve experienced a racist hate incident or hate crime, you can get support from Friends, Families and Travellers on their website.
If you’ve experienced sectarianism
If you’ve experienced sectarianism, there is advice and information for different age groups from Action on Sectarianism. You can check what is available on the Action on Sectarianism website.
There might be other local organisations that can help you - you can try searching online.
If the incident happened at your home, school or workplace
In some situations, you might want further support after you’ve experienced a hate incident or hate crime.
If the incident happened at work
If you’ve experienced a hate incident or hate crime at work from a colleague then you should speak to your employer.
You might be able to make a discrimination claim against your employer. You can check if you’ve been discriminated against at work.
If the incident happened near home
If your neighbours or people in your area are harassing you, you can complain to their landlord, your local council or even take civil court action.
Find out more about actions you can take to stop harassment.
If the incident happened at school
If you’ve experienced bullying, the school should deal with it under their behaviour policy. They should co-operate with the police and social work department if they are involved.
If the school fails to deal with the bullying, you might have a discrimination claim. You might be able to challenge the schools failure to act under their public sector equality duty.
Read more about how to deal with problems at school.