'Too scared to leave our home'

The trouble started more than 10 years ago. Back then, in 1990, the estate was just a year old and filled with new tenants. Fifteen sizeable redbrick houses arranged in a tight horseshoe shape, with big gardens at the back and pretty porches at the front. The layout meant that neighbours overlooked each other and that parking wasn't always easy, but space was - and still is - at a premium in Southwark and no one complained about the rather claustrophobic atmosphere. They were just pleased to be off the council lists and into a nice new home.

In those days, superficially at least, the estate was a model of racial integration: an African schoolteacher and his disabled wife lived at one end with their kids; there was a Moroccan family, a Greek Cypriot family, a Bengali family; a good mix of white Londoners, black Londoners, and representatives of many ethnic minorities from all over the world. Though it was never what you'd call a close community, at the very beginning people seemed to get on with each other well enough. They'd been vetted by the housing association before they were given the keys, so no one was known to have a criminal record or a history of racist violence.

Yet the peace of this orderly south London estate was about to be shattered. Quickly it became clear that a small group of white tenants and their friends, in the words of one of their victims, Alie Coker, "objected to black people living among them". "We've had it the worst," says Alie, "because my wife and me are a mixed race couple, and they seem particularly to dislike that. But it's not just us."

Off and on, over the course of the next 10 years, windows were broken and locks glued up; a pet dog was attacked with a golf club; paint was thrown over houses; people were chased in cars, and verbal abuse was hurled at non-British and non-white residents. One by one, the African schoolteacher, the Bengalis, other ethnic-minority tenants left the estate and were replaced in most cases by white families. Those nonwhites who remain, like Alie and his wife Ann, now live in a state of siege, sleepless and frightened, relying for their safety on CCTV, security lights, a fireproof letter box and a baseball bat by the side of their bed. Their teenage daughter Jennifer is escorted to and from school every day, arriving 10 minutes late and leaving 10 minutes early to avoid a small gang of youths who, in the past, have been waiting for her at the gates.

It's a tale of relentless victimisation, all the more startling for its location in London, supposedly the most tolerant and racially liberal of British cities. Nowadays, large flags bearing the cross of St George, the hijacked symbol of English racism, obscure several windows on the estate. I'm watched from three houses as I walk from my cab to the Cokers' front door. "There's not a day goes by when my family isn't watched," confirms Alie. The ethnic mix is much diluted, and gangs of youths loiter aimlessly, eyeing up cars. What was once an unusually pleasant council estate - an example of good, well-built social housing - has turned in on itself, isolating residents and restricting their movement to the barest minimum.

The Cokers describe what they've suffered as a systematic campaign of racial harassment by their neighbours, culminating last year in a physical assault on Alie. Born in Sierra Leone, Alie came to Britain in 1993 to escape the violence of civil unrest, at first finding work as a security guard at the local Pentecostal church - where he met Ann. Every Sunday, indeed, the couple go to the almost all-white Southwark Cathedral in the morning and the almost all-black Pentecostal church in the afternoon: "At both, we're accepted with no problem," they say. Their living room is decorated with Christian icons and photographs of their white wedding two years ago; music blares out of their son's bedroom; only the fire extinguishers and the CCTV monitor, recommended by the police, give notice of their unusually inhibited lifestyle. Apart from the church, Ann rarely goes out these days: she can handle the name-calling - "Nigger-lover; black man's whore"; "a witch who practises black magic" - but she's also been chased by teenagers on bikes and finds it less stressful to stay in with the television.

She worries, too, that Alie, who's in his late thirties and works long hours as a London bus driver, isn't getting the sleep he needs because of the trouble. "He doesn't sleep more than an hour without getting up and looking out of the window," she says. "We've found kids trying the back door in the middle of the night. Sometimes I feel very frightened. I think to myself, what's going to happen tonight?" Their anxiety is well-founded. Last summer, on a hot evening and after a long shift on the buses, Alie noticed that a couple of teenagers - 19-year-olds, whose faces he recognised from previous incidents - were lingering very near the Coker family car. He went out to move it, but they stood in his way and began beating the side panels. He asked them to stop and received a stream of abuse in return.

A teenage girl ran to her house to call out her brothers and within seconds a crowd of white kids stood around him, blocking his way. Alie called the police on his mobile and then called his home number, but Ann was in bed and didn't hear the phone, so the answering machine clicked on - and recorded what happened next.

The racist abuse pours out of the machine as he plays it back. It sounds like a crowd in the grip of hysteria, a girl repeatedly punching him on the chest and screaming at him, the shouts of men in the background, the language vile and cruel. "She spat on me, which you can't hear," says Alie, matter-of-factly, "and then she went to another car and got in the driver's seat and said she was going to run me over." The tape plays for a minute and a half and then stops, the moment at which Alie dropped his mobile phone as the girl's boyfriend - who doesn't live on the estate - hit him in the face, knocking out two teeth at the front and damaging his jaw. He pulls down his lower lip to show me the false ones and the dental reconstruction that cost him several thousand pounds. "I tried to defend myself," he says, "but another boy jumped on my back and pinned my arms behind me. Another one was kicking my stomach. When he fell over, they all came at me."

The police arrived just minutes after Alie's attackers decided they'd had enough and left the scene. Three months later the boy who hit him was arrested, but a lack of evidence, despite the tape and a witness, caused the CPS to drop the case before it got beyond the magistrates' court.

It's a situation that Alie finds profoundly depressing: he'd like to take out a private prosecution but earns just too much to qualify for legal aid, and not nearly enough to pay for it himself. "I feel unhappy now if I'm not around, because I worry about my family. It's very frustrating. We have enormous mobile-phone bills because I get to my last bus stop and instantly phone Ann to ask where she is and where the kids are." He turns to unplug the answering machine and take it back upstairs. While he's gone, Ann whispers: "He's one hell of a man to put up with what he has."

"People are facing terrible harassment at the hands of neighbours all over London," says Andrew Buckingham, a spokesman for Victim Support who knows the Coker case well. "We see lots of it. We can provide emotional support, but unfortunately it's not down to us, or the police, to get someone moved away from a bad situation. Ideally they'd be moved if that's what they want. But even better, the perpetrators would be moved."

Southwark Council policy and the policy of the Cokers' housing association is clear: anyone living in one of their properties found guilty of racial abuse is evicted immediately and, in effect, made homeless. Children under 18 then come under a duty of care of the social services. "We have a zero-tolerance policy on racism," says a housing association spokeswoman. But proving racial harassment is another matter altogether. Without a conviction for a racially motivated crime, or strong evidence of racial abuse perpetrated by a named resident, the problem falls into the category of "nuisance" instead. And, in order to evict someone causing "nuisance" to a neighbour - anti-social behaviour of any kind - the association has to undertake a lengthy, costly court process. Often it's far easier simply to transfer the victims to another house than to jump through legal hoops.

"It seems grossly unfair that the family who's been victimised should be required to move," says Buckingham. "The Cokers have a lovely house where they are and don't want to be shoved somewhere less nice." Plus, they're the ones who'll have to pay for the cost of moving.

Nevertheless, the Cokers are desperate to get out of the estate. "I thought I'd make a stand," says Ann, "we did for a while, but it's just got too much. Jennifer has gone into a shell. She wants to go to McDonald's and the cinema with her friends, but I can't let her out on her own."

The housing association is keen to stress its willingness to help the Cokers and admits that the area has a racist reputation. "They've been identified as high priority to be moved because they've been suffering problems," says a spokeswoman. Understandably, Ann and Alie want a comparable home, with four bedrooms, in a safe part of London. But "four-bedroom houses are in very short supply in the areas they've specified, and it may take some time."

Quicker, one would have thought, to bite the bullet and turf out those who've made the estate such an ugly place to live? "It's this issue of nuisance or racial harassment," the spokeswoman replies. "If they claim for nuisance, it's a much lengthier process. We want to help the Cokers, we really do. We're in the process of sorting them out." Meanwhile, it's Ann and Alie who have to live there.

Victim Supportline: 0845 3030900.