Man who abused Muslim students in street handed community sentence

The Exeter Express and Echo reports on the community sentence passed on a man whose rant against a pair of Muslim students on an Exeter street in May went viral after it was posted online.

Stephen Scatcherd, 59, admitted using threatening and abusive language and pleaded guilty to a racially aggravated charge of harassment when he appeared before Exeter magistrates’ court on Monday.

Scatcherd was filmed verbally abusing Kalsoom Naqvi and her friend, Tayiba Hussain, as they walked to a Tesco store on Sidwell Street on 28 May.

Ms Naqvi filmed Scatcherd’s rant in which he made “bomb jokes” as the girls walked past before telling them to “Go back home” and saying “This is not your country”.

In the video footage posted online, Scatcherd can be heard telling the girls, “Do you know what the problem is in this country at the moment? Muslims absolutely invading this country, like cockroaches. You’re like cockroaches.”

When asked what it was about the two girls walking about in the town centre that bothered him so much, Scatcherd said he was bothered by “immigrants”. He told the girls “Where are you from, ‘cos you’re not from England?”

When one of the girl’s asks him; “Where are you from?” He answered: “I’m from f*****g England, born and bred.”

Speaking to the local paper, Ms Naqvi said of the incident: “I felt confusion really. I don’t feel that any person, regardless of their faith or their race, should be targeted like that, for no reason whatsoever.

“I felt lonely, because I just saw so many people looking around and not really intervening, or doing anything.”

She said she posted the video online to “make the point that people should intervene when they see something like this happening” and to encourage other victims to come forward.

Mr Scatcherd told the paper he felt matters had been “blown up out of proportion” and that he had been “intimidated into losing my temper”. He said, “If they had left me alone, none of this would have happened.”

Mr Scatcherd was sentenced to perform 100 hours of unpaid work.