4:18pm Tuesday 23rd February 2010
By Carl Brown
LESBIAN, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people in Waltham Forest are an “invisible” minority with many passing as straight to avoid harassment or attack, a report has found.
The findings, entitled Waltham Forest LGBT Matters, were commissioned by the council to gain a greater understanding of life in the borough for the LGBT community.
More than half of the 270 LGBT surveyed feel that homophobic or transphobic harassment is a problem in the borough.
One in three avoid certain areas for fear of homophobic attack, one in 10 have been attacked and a third verbally abused because of their sexuality.
The report comes weeks after the latest police figures show a sharp increase in the number of reported homophobic crimes in the borough.
There were 44 reported incidents in the 12 months leading up to January 2010, compared to just 14 in the previous year.
The findings also show that many LGBT people feel little sense of community in the borough, which the report describes as “exacerbated by the absence of LGBT community infrastructure” and by an absence of LGBT people in the council's promotional literature.
A significant minority of those interviewed also said they felt that many members of the large Muslim and evangelical communities in the borough were “critical of LGBT people”.
The report estimates there are between 7,000 and 10,000 lesbian, gay or bisexual people in the borough.
The council has promised to work harder to inform people on how to report hate crime and provide more opportunities to celebrate the LGBT community locally.
Cllr Marie Pye, communities cabinet member said: “We work hard in our schools and in the wider community to educate young people about celebrating differences.
“But perhaps we are not working hard enough to contact those who actually experience harassment”.
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