Shameful

From the archive, first published Thursday 14th Jul 2005.

A teenage girl is too terrified to leave her house after being subjected to a racist attack by two women while she was out walking the family dog.

Joanne Bunce, 15, was born in the UK and has slightly dark skin because her grandfather was South American. But on Tuesday two women approached her as she stood on a green yards from her home in Rose Hill, Oxford and told her to "get out of their country".

The two, described as in their 20s or 30s, then pushed her to the ground and kicked and punched her. The women also kicked her dog, a spaniel puppy called Butch, several metres across the pavement into the road.

The same two women had threatened her a month before and the attack is not connected to the terrorist attacks in London last week.

In the first incident, Joanne said she saw the women in the same place and they called her "paki" and told her if she did not go back to her "own country", they would "send her back to her family in little pieces".

After Tuesday's attack, which happened at about 6pm, Joanne's father Roy, 58, took her to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, where she was treated for a scratched face and side and bruising to her kidneys.

Speaking at her home in Courtland Road yesterday, Joanne said she was "very scared". She added: "A man shouted at them to get off me and they ran away, but I just wonder what might have happened if he hadn't walked past."

Her mother Sue, a cleaner at Oriel and Merton Colleges, said: "I just want to cry thinking about her lying there. I wish it could have been me instead of her."

Joanne's sister Jeanette, 18, was at work when she received a call from another sister telling her what happened.

"When I got home, Joanne was curled up on the stairs, hysterical and crying and bleeding," she said. "We rang the police and an ambulance then my dad came home and took Joanne to hospital.

"We have lived in Rose Hill all of our lives and we have never had a problem like this," Jeanette said. "What worries me is that this is going to affect Joanne for the rest of her life -- she will be too frightened to walk down the street."

Police appealed for witnesses to the attack to call 08458 505505 or contact Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

An inquiry is to be launched into why police took 35 minutes to arrive at the scene of the attack.

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