A young woman who comes from England originally has been viciously assaulted in a Scottish city centre in what police are treating as a racially motivated attack.

Lucy Newman, 22, who lived in Cheltenham as a child, claims her male attacker said “Get back to England” before punching her in the face. She was left with serious injuries after the attack last Saturday in Aberdeen.

Ms Newman, who was on a night out with a female friend, said she was hit so hard that she fell, hitting the pavement and fracturing her left cheekbone. The nerves in her eye have also been damaged.

“We had just left a club and were going to catch a bus,” said Ms Newman, a beauty therapist who has lived in Scotland for about 15 years.

“We noticed these two older guys alongside us . . . we carried on walking and then heard them saying something about the English, because I’m from England and I do have a twang with some of the things I say.

“He shouted something like, ‘Get back to England’. I turned round, not even thinking that he was speaking to me. I didn’t even get a chance to look at him properly and he just punched me in the face.”

Ms Newman, whose accent sounds Scottish, added: “A few things I say sound English. But no one has ever hit me because I am English.”

Her mother, Susan, 47, a trainee funeral director, said: “I can’t believe somebody, especially a man, could do something like this to such a lovely and quiet girl. She’s tiny, about 5ft 3in (1.6m) and weighs next to nothing.”

Grampian Police are appealing for witnesses. Sergeant David Forsyth said: “Whilst this is clearly a despicable act, it is unfortunately not uncommon for racially motivated incidents to take place. Very often these incidents occur during the evenings when alcohol has been consumed.

“Where sufficient evidence exists that an incident had some racial motivation to it, those responsible will be charged with a racial offence in addition to any other matter.”

There have been other incidents of low-level anti-Englishness over the years, particularly in rural areas, but overt violence is uncommon.

In 1999 Tina Warren, who ran a museum near Pitlochry, Perthshire, claimed her time in Scotland had been made a “living hell” by anti-English racists. She alleged that she met “vicious hostility”, received verbal abuse and her signs had been smashed.

A spate of anti-English racial attacks by Scots came in June 2006, during the football World Cup. In the most shocking incident, a seven-year-old boy wearing an England shirt was punched in the head in an Edinburgh park. Hugo Clapshaw, whose father is a New Zealander and whose mother is Scottish, was attacked by a man who shouted “This is Scotland, not f****** England” before running off. In another incident, a man from Leeds who had moved to Lanarkshire had three windows broken at his home after flying the St George’s Cross.

Aberdeen, which has been the focus of the international oil industry for more than 30 years, has a slightly lower rate of racial incidences than other Scottish cities. Nevertheless, the Aberdeen Racist Incidents Partnership found that there had been a rise in reported racist incidents in primary and secondary schools in recent years.

Lewis Macdonald, the Labour MSP for Aberdeen Central, said: “This is a very disappointing incident, given Aberdeen’s strong culture of welcoming people from all over Britain and the world. It’s a very cosmopolitan city.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Any assault, verbal or physical, which is borne out of prejudice is utterly abhorrent. Fortunately our police forces take racially aggravated crime very seriously and our courts are able to reflect the nature of aggravation when sentencing.”

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