A KELTY woman who was subjected to abuse about her disability in Dunfermline town centre has spoken of the effect the incident has had on her life.

Andrew Doig, 26, of Pittencrieff Street, appeared at Dunfermline Sheriff Court on Wednesday after admitting behaving in a threatening or abusive manner which was likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm by repeatedly shouting abusive comments to a woman which related to her disability on October 19, 2016. Sheriff Charles Macnair ordered him to do 180 hours of unpaid work as a punishment (see story on facing page).

After reading about Doig’s court appearance on the Press website, Linzi Kelly, who suffers from cerebral palsy, said she was still trying to recover from the incident, which has left her unable to leave her home alone.

“Me and my partner were walking towards the Abbey car park with one of my friends,” she explained.

“My head was down and I was talking to my partner when, all of a sudden, this guy was coming towards me.

“He was trying to imitate the way I walk and started screaming at me, he got quite close to me.

"He was screaming at me that I was a spastic. He said to my partner, ‘How can you love someone who walks like that?’

"The guy doesn’t know anything about me. He doesn’t know how hard I have worked to be able to walk when doctors said I couldn’t. He doesn’t know how long it took me to learn to drive.

"I am college-educated and run my home. He doesn’t know that. I don’t know why he thought it was OK to say those kind of things.

“To everyone else it is just words. To everyone else it is just names but, to be honest, it is not. It is clarification of the fact that I am not seen as normal.

"No matter how hard I try, I am not going to walk in the same way as anyone else and people are still going to stare at me in the street. It has affected my life really badly.

"I cannot leave the house by myself. I can’t go into Dunfermline town centre. I cannot take my kids to the park any more or take them for an ice cream.”

Linzi, 26, returned home shaken and contacted the police and, over a year on, is determined to try and move on and get her life back on track – despite disappointment that Doig’s sentence didn’t, in her opinion, reflect the effect his behaviour has had on her.

“He got 180 hours of community service. I think it should have been more considering the fact that it has had such an impact on me, my family and my kids.

"I feel as if, even though he pleaded guilty, the judge should have contacted me and asked me how it has affected me. Maybe if he had known that, he would have got more.

“My kids have noticed a difference in me since it happened. My son has asked me, why aren’t you taking us to the park any more? I have tried to explain that it is going to take a while.”