SOME gay people in villages and rural towns are being bullied relentlessly because of their sexuality, leaving some too scared to leave the house, an academic has warned.

A study suggests hate crime is an “everyday reality” for many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people who said harassment and verbal abuse was “part and parcel” of their lives.

But they are not reporting it because they fear police will not take them seriously or they might be “outed” to their families.

Dr Stevie-Jade Hardy, a lecturer at the University of Leicester’s Centre for Hate Studies and author of a report into hate crime, said people in rural communities were being left “lonely and isolated with nowhere to turn”.

She said: “There were quite a few who mentioned being targeted by young people in their area. So it started and people would graffiti their house or cause criminal damage, young people when they walked down the street would verbally abuse them, call them derogatory names, and often it would start to escalate.

“If something was done about it, then they found that sometimes the instances got worse and those young people were targeting them more frequently. But it tended to be those more everyday experiences that are incredibly difficult to deal with – that drip, drip effect.”

Dr Hardy made the comments as she published the latest in a series of studies into hate crime victimisation.

She found that 88 per cent of the 50 people she spoke to in-depth for the report had been a victim of a hate crime. But Dr Hardy said national statistics suggested it was hugely under-reported, with around 35,000 cases of hate crime against LGBT people going unreported every year.

She said: “The impact is huge. We know that it has a significant emotional, physical health impact on people where they are scared to go out. They are scared to reveal that aspect of their identity.”