The owner of a healthcare company subjected a young woman with Tourettes to vile verbal abuse about her disability.
Paul Halliday, 52, launched a tirade of abuse at the the woman, who is 24, when she accidently brushed past him in a supermarket due to an involuntary arm tic.
He called her a s**z and said "people like you shouldn't be let out", Blackburn Magistrates Court heard.
She was so badly affected by the incident, which happened in Morrisons in Bacup, Lancashire, she has started to suffer numerous daily seizures due to stress, said her mother.
"It should never have happened to her. It was a hate crime," the mum told LancsLive.
The court heard how at 2.30pm, the woman was visiting the supermarket with a friend when she brushed past Halliday.
He immediately turned on her, began verbally abusing her and smacking one hand against another in the playground taunt used to imply someone is disabled..
The woman's friend stepped in to help, but Halliday - who runs Halliday Healthcare Ltd - ignored her and carried on until a member of staff threatened to bar him.
The incident was captured on CCTV but Halliday, who runs a company which provides disability aids, denied threatening behaviour.
The court heard he admitted using the word 's**z' but denied any further words or behaviour which could cause alarm or distress. He was convicted after a trial.
Speaking to LancsLive following the hearing, the woman's mum said: "It just beggars belief that someone would act like that in this day and age. It has been really distressing. This shouldn't have happened to my daughter. It was a hate crime."
She said her daughter had been unable to leave the house for a year after being diagnosed with a functional neurological condition. The condition causes her to suffer involuntary vocal tics and body twitches, and can cause her limbs to get stuck in certain positions.
"There is a direct link between her tics and stress", she said.
On the day of the incident she had taken the brave move to go shopping in a neighbouring town with a friend, in a first outing since her diagnosis. But her treatment by Halliday has affected her confidence and caused a change in her condition, her mum said.
"It is all made worse by the fact he works for a healthcare company", she said. "The whole thing has been really distressing and he has dragged it out for as long as he could. He had more than one opportunity to admit what he had done.
"My daughter was not able to go to the trial but really wanted to go to the sentencing. A few days before she lost the mechanism to speak. Her words wouldn't come out.
"She now has multiple seizures every day, which never happened before this incident. Developing a neurological condition in her early 20s has been distressing enough, but to be subjected to this kind of treatment by someone who should know better is appalling."
Halliday from Bacup, was handed a six month curfew and ordered to pay £200 compensation, £650 costs and a £95 victim surcharge.
