A dramatic increase in sexual orientation hate crimes since 2010 has been recorded in data released by Greater Manchester Police.
Hate crimes targeting the gay community have been on the rise for over a decade, with data released by GMP showing that sexual orientation hate crimes are actually the most-reported sub-category of hate crimes in Greater Manchester.
The graph above shows a dramatic increase since 2010 in the number of reported hate crime, bearing in mind that the Government’s own statistics suggest fewer than one in ten LGBTQ+ people report hate crimes or incidents.
LGBTQ+ expert and podcast host Eden Heath said: “As social media has cemented itself as part of our daily rituals, access to news and current affairs has become constant meaning we’re much more aware of issues which impact our community as anyone with a social media account can share a story in seconds.
“Unfortunately, we are likely to see the aftermath of more LGBTQ+ hate crimes, even though there has been a slight decrease of 6%, hate crimes based on sexual orientation are still up by 112%.
“These statistics only show a portion of the true reality of LGBTQ+ hate crimes with a huge majority of victims choosing not to report the incident to the police.
“There are a few reasons for this, such as a lack of confidence in the justice system, perhaps not being fully ‘out’ to extended family which adds fear of being identified, or in most cases, growing up LGBTQ+ in the UK we’ve become desensitised to homophobic and transphobic rhetoric from a young age.”
The graph above shows the number of gay hate crimes per 10,000 people in the different boroughs of Greater Manchester, in 2022.
The city of Manchester has the most amount of reported sexual orientation hate crimes, despite being the most diverse borough with Gay Village in the centre.
The data from GMP shows that in 2022, just under 2,000 sexual orientation hate crimes were committed across the region, making that 1,580 more than in 2010 where there were 325.
And this data doesn’t consider the hate crimes that are not reported.
Manchester’s Gay Village saw a violent hate crime earlier this year in April, when an adult sex shop on Canal Street was smashed with a crowbar for the third time in six weeks.
The owner described the attack as ‘premeditated’ and ‘targeted’ after the shop, called CloneZone, was brutally vandalised.
The Manchester council leader, Bev Craig, told Manchester Evening News: “Unfortunately, we are seeing politics nationally that has become more divisive.
“We’ve seen post-Brexit a rise in hate towards the LGBTQ community as well across the country.”
