Racism in small-town Maine

I was exiting a locally-owned hardware store in a small city where I was born and lived practically my entire life, in broad daylight, when a man in his late-thirties, early-forties, aggressively followed me across the parking lot to my car screaming and mimicking the sounds of an AK-47. He yelled: "JAP", "VIETNAMESE", "YELLOW [n-word]," all the while threatening to rape me and ship my remains back to where I come from. I ran when I noticed he'd escalated to picking up a pipe...

When I decided to self-advocate and report the incident, I was met with some shock, some dismissal, and because I work in non-profit/social services, I immediately recognized how difficult the process was (e.g. jumping through hoops, assumptions made, writing long reports).

How would this process seem to my say older mother, who comes from a different culture of let's let it go, and who might be afraid to sit behind a sheet of glass and answer questions to a stranger. What about someone for whom writing is difficult or impossible?