Lecturer told German academic to ‘go home’
Neighbour targeted her as she tended garden
A RETIRED lecturer reduced a German academic to tears by repeatedly telling her to ‘go home’ as she tended her front garden.
Dr John Smart, 72, twice targeted Roman military history expert Dr Birgitta Hoffman, 49, as he walked past her home on his way to Waitrose.
In one incident Dr Hoffman, who has lived in Wilmslow, Cheshire, for 22 years, was planting flowers outside her £800,000 house when he told her: ‘You’re that German, why are you still here? Go back.’ On another occasion, while she was sweeping her drive, Smart asked: ‘Are you still here?’
Dr Hoffman, a member of the Hadrianic Society and expert on Roman fortifications in Britain, called police saying Smart had left her ‘shaking’ and suffering a ‘crying fit’.
Dr Hoffman, originally from Landstuhl in Germany, told a court: ‘There was no need for this. British society as a whole treasures good manners and it’s become a bit of a mantra that if you’re British you’re not rude. I know that German ways can be viewed as very brash but I’ve made it my mission to tone this down.’
At Stockport magistrates’ court, Smart – a former mechanical engineering lecturer at the University of Manchester, who lives in a £600,000 house near Dr Hoffman’s – insisted he ‘didn’t have a problem with Germans’ and claimed she had been ‘exaggerating’.
When asked if he told Dr Hoffman to ‘go home’, Smart replied: ‘The more I think of it, I’m positive I wouldn’t say this. I did not say, “Are you still here?” – these aren’t my views.’
The pensioner was nevertheless convicted of two charges of racially aggravated harassment. He was fined £1,290 and ordered to pay Dr Hoffman £250 in compensation plus costs, and ordered not to contact her for 12 months.
The court heard the incidents occurred in April and July last year – two years after Dr Hoffman stood unsuccessfully as a Liberal Democrat in local council elections. She told the hearing: ‘I was in my front garden when I became aware there was a gentleman passing my hedge. I said “good morning” and this gentleman stopped and said: “You’re that German, why are you still here? Go back.”’
Dr Hoffman said she replied: ‘If you’re British, there’s no need to be rude.’ Smart then ‘said something like “you’re obnoxious, go back”’.
She added: ‘ After this happened I didn’t dare go out into my front yard unaccompanied, I just felt threatened.’
Convicting Smart, magistrates said: ‘Dr Hoffman gave clear evidence whilst we did not find Dr Smart credible.’