IS it racist, drink related or just dumb ignorance? Whatever the cause it's time to bring an end to the silly attacks on the home of a 71 year-old Forest woman who just wants to be left alone to live her life in peace and quiet in a local village.

Police have offered to install specialist warning equipment at the Sling near Coleford, home of Mrs Ingrid Hitchmough who says that every day she lives in fear of insults and minor damage.

In the latest incident Mrs Hitchmough has found a statue in her garden damaged. It had been erected in memory of her son, who died, aged 10, from measles in the 1970s.

Now the head of the little figure, playing pan pipes on the stone bird bath, is missing.

"I really don't want to know who it is – I would just like it returned, or for someone to say where it is so that it can be repaired," she said.

"It must be somewhere, lying in a garden perhaps or a field."

Since falling downstairs at Christmas she has been in considerable pain and her doctor has urged her to go to Gloucester for an X-ray and to spend a few days in hospital, but she feels she cannot leave her home for fear of more damage.

She says the incident is one of a series of nasty experiences she has had to suffer at the hands of a small gang of local youths, which included having her home plastered with eggs and flour at Halloween.

"They never attack my neighbours because they know there there are men in the house and they would never get away with it," she said.

One factor behind the attacks she says is the fact that she was born in Germany.

She had been here for 23 years after living with her husband in the Midlands where they never experienced the sort of trouble she now has in Sling.

"My father was a German officer and he was killed in Russia in 1942 and after the war we moved to England and my mother married Howard Jones of Lydney."

When she lost her stepfather some years ago she nursed her mother until her recent death, but she said they felt more English than German and had no relatives in Germany.

She said it made her angry to think people still carried grievances so long after the war and especially sad that this was being continued by young people, who she had always tried to talk to and help.

The police have said they will keep a watch on the problem but she feared with their level of manpower they could not do much.

"To make an example of one of them would probably put an end to it," said Mrs Hitchmough.