Race and religion vile graffiti target
Jan 9 2009 The Journal
A PERSISTENT vandal caused thousands of pounds of damage by defacing his neighbourhood with racist anti-religious graffiti in a series of night-time attacks.
Jamie Wales daubed dozens of offensive slogans – some with the National Front logo – on the walls of buildings near his South Tyneside home.
The 21-year-old was first arrested after being linked by DNA evidence and toured the area with police pointing out the vandalism he had caused, Newcastle Crown Court heard yesterday.
But after being released on bail, he breached his curfew by renewing his graffiti attacks, the court was told.
Wales went on to admit five counts of racially aggravated damage, three more of religiously aggravated damage and asked for a further 84 similar offences to be taken into consideration.
He was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment suspended for two years with supervision and 300 hours unpaid work.
Judge Guy Whitburn said a sentence of imprisonment was inevitable but he took into account the fact that Wales had already served the equivalent of a 12-month jail term while on remand in custody.
The judge told Wales: “This type of racist abuse writ large in an area which is mixed is extremely offensive to people who live there.
“The ignorance displayed by your immature, stupid and offensive ideas goes without saying.”
Wales was living in Brabourne Street, South Shields, at the time of the attacks, which happened between February and July last year in streets nearby including Brinkburn Lane, Boldon Lane, Ashley Road and Darenth Street.
His targets were mainly the walls of houses, but also a betting shop and pavements.
In police interviews, despite displaying racist attitudes, he said he did not consider himself to be a racist and had not intended to upset anyone, the court heard.
Investigations also revealed a significant number of text messages had been sent from his mobile phone containing what were purportedly jokes about ethnic and religious groups.
Robert Woodcock, defending, said at the time, Wales had shown enormous confusion about a number of matters in his personal life and had been in serious decline through drink and drug abuse.
But he said there were signs Wales had since developed insight into his behaviour and was aware of the need to change.
South Tyneside Council put the cost of cleaning off the graffiti at well over £10,000.
Coun Joanne Bell, lead member for Safer and Stronger Communities, said: “Staff said this was one of the worst cases they had come across. Some of the scrawls were so vile that the police made an emergency call to the council so that it could be removed immediately in the early hours of the morning.”
