Mum attacked with bleach as men 'shouted monkey noises'

The courageous mum is now sending a powerful message to her attackers, who she believes were motivated by the racist chanting heard during England’s recent football match in Bulgaria just the night before.

Reem Fahad, a social support worker, was walking to a vulnerable patient at 1.30pm in Crown Street in Horwich when horror hit.

The mum-of-one watched as a liquid, thought to be bleach, was thrown over her by a group of men in a moving car as they chanted racial insults.

Ms Fahad said: “I was walking to my last client of the day down Crown Lane.

“I had my headphones in as I normally do, and was looking at presents on my phone for my son’s birthday which is on Halloween.

“I sensed a car near me but I didn’t think anything of it.

“Next minute, I felt this wet substance on my stomach and all over my legs. My first reaction was thinking it might be acid because you see it on the news.

“As I took my headphones out, I heard the people in the car making monkey noises. I think they were all men in the car and there was more than two or three of them.

“I was in that much in shock that I stood there and then I realised it was bleach — it was that smell.

“Within a few seconds my clothes started turning orange.”

Stunned with shock, she said she felt she had to carry on to help the dementia patient she was heading to see.

Ms Fahad said: “My last client is an extremely vulnerable elderly lady with dementia, she’s on a lot of medication and can’t cope on her own. I made the decision to go and see my client.

“I went back to work straight away — that was more important to me, but a million things were going through my head.”

But then she felt the stinging of the bleach.

She said: “I felt it stinging my stomach and legs when I was at my client’s house. I was there for 15 minutes and then I knew I had to get help. I called my mum and told her what happened, she was in a state, crying her eyes out. I was in so much shock and just running off adrenaline — it was like nothing had happened.”

Police rushed to help the victim, taking her statements and clothes to help with an investigation. The quiet Horwich community has been left shocked by the attack.

Ms Fahad said: “I have had hundreds of messages from people asking if I’m ok. I’m a support worker and I have never experienced anything like this here in Horwich. It is is a lovely, beautiful place. I have had a lot of love for the people here since we moved here three years ago.”

But as a mixed race person, her mum Arabic-Irish and her dad Brazilian-Jamaican, she says she is no stranger to racism in the UK.

Ms Fahad said: “It’s not the first time I have experienced racism. Being mixed race, you grow up hearing about it and seeing it, so the community is more horrified than I am at what’s happened. It’s affected the people closest to me. My partner is very angry.

“Racism is still very much alive. A lot of people in this country still believe that it’s not. You don’t realise if you’re not from an ethnic background.”

Ms Farad said she thinks that the racist chants at the recent England match in Bulgaria fuelled the attack, saying: “It’s too much of a coincidence, this happened the next day.”

She says she fears for her three-year-old son, named King after race rights leader Martin Luther King Jr: “I’m bringing my son up to be proud of who he is and the fact that he is mixed race, which is difficult in situations like this. 

“I’m trying to set a positive path for my son and it’s not a community I want him to grow up in where he feels scared because of who he is. I fear for him."

In the face of the racist yobs who attacked her, the hardworking mum is taking a stand against racism in Bolton.

She said she has come forward to encourage other victims who may be scared to speak out, inspired by the England footballers who ‘kept playing despite the racism’.

She said: “There could be more victims and they might be too scared to say anything, these people were clearly targeting anyone of colour.

“I am safely proud of who I am, I’m proud of my roots, but I’m also Manchester born and bred and I am patriotic to be British.

“I am not going to stop living because of a few ignorant young men. I will never be afraid and there will never be a time where I am — that’s when they win. 

“They have probably been bred to hate, I feel sorry for them. You can’t fight hate with hate.

“This needs to send out a strong message that racism is not acceptable and it never has been. It’s intimidating, but we have to have a community where we stand up against this. It’s 2019 and racism is still an issue and it shouldn’t be.”