Surely Mridul Wadhwa has to go now? Report into ERCC out.

Just saw this video on Twitter.

https://x.com/dessievendee/status/1834311738155565067?s=46

It's worth a watch given what's happened.

She was 100% right then & she's more right in hindsight.

Also, watch all the smug 'professional feminists' who dominate the third sector supposed to support women in Scotland. Those women, Sturgeon too, are the reason Wadhwa has lingered so long (and destructively) & got away with so much.

Absolutely shame on every one of them.

At the time of appointment, Maggie Chapman was COO of ERCC and set much of the policy.

Chapman is, of course, a MSP with the Scottish Green Party. The same party which voted en masse against the six words amendment of the Forensic Medical Examiner Services Bill in 2020. Here is a thread on Twitter regarding Mridul Wadhwa's behaviour during that debate -

x.com/ForWomenScot/status/1792860478235898066

There's no responsibility for his hire being accepted. Even the Equality and Human Rights Commission, when appealed to upon the point that a male had been given a job which was specifically advertised under an occupational requirement, went 'meh. It's too late now!'.

The rot runs deep in Scottish civic life.

Cross party in fact turns out to be 1 Alba MSP and 1 Tory MSP

I wonder if this will even be discused by MSPs

But good to know there are 2 women willing to speak up.

https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,crossparty-calls-for-action-over-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-row

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13846947/transgender-rape-crisis-centre-edinburgh-scotland-mridul-wadhwa.html?ito=native_share_article-nativemenubutton
He's quit

It says they run the Rape Crisis Centre for Brighton.

That's why its essential that the agreed standards of federated centres are made obligatory, or you cant use that name.

They have appropriated the name because the funders decided that Survivors Network which isn't a women or a feminist organisation should run rape crisis provision in Brighton.

Using the name illegitimately doesn't mean it is.

As said up thread unless and until we can get funders etc., to recognise there are standards, and it isn't about them saying this is the cheapest choice, or this fits our personal politics, this will go on happening.

But it is this lack of respect for women, let alone the concepts that women have worked long and hard for, those with the money will constantly undermine us.

(I find it really weird that anyone would think just using a name confirms that is what they are.)

Maybe a start would be all of us familiarising ourselves with whatever flimsy standards and compliance women services have set up.

And then we can quote them when funders or local politicians start talking out of their back sides or their local funding budget.

Dont forget Brighton is also the council that took away from a Brighton DV project which they had been funding, and gave it to all all purpose housing organisation.

It is about the absolute disregard for anyting that women say or do.

Every area needs a local women's group that constantly monitors local councils decisions, and even if you cant stop financial decision, you can challenge misrepresentation.

ie funding SN to provide support of victims of rape is not the same as funding a Rape Crisis Centre.

Councillors might want to pass off this sleight of hand as that is what it is, but it isn't. Its dishonest.

Who hired this twat? Surely they must accept responsibility.

I’m sure Naomi Cunningham will know whether or not to draw any inference from one case to the other

It's also the first result if you use the location search on the national site

https://rapecrisis.org.uk/find-a-centre/?centreq=Brighton%2C+Brighton+and+Hove%2C+UK&lat=50.8229402&lng=-0.1362672&placee_id=

@AccidentallyWesAnderson

I would agree with you that it is a rape crisis centre and it's what they call themselves. It was founded in 1990.

survivorsnetwork.org.uk/about-us/

I know on one of Sarah's thread she did mention the legal basis on which her barrister thought she could win, and I dont think it was this.

And anyway court cases are always strange logic. It will probably come down to did Sarah read the small print carefully or some other victim blaming response.

But this is of course if we had any hope of a Women's and Equalities Committee that actually cared about women, rather than exclusively the LGBTQI+ community, things could be different. ie if the Committe in response to both the court case and the report on ERCC put in motion a process by which what are the basic service provision of centre federated to become national standards that both funders and service providers had to abide by that would be a big step forward.

But as the new Chair of the W&E Committee doesn't even know what a woman is, I dont suppose we can expect any pro-active, pro-woman actions from there.

I wonder if it is worth lobbying Jess Phillips who is Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls and ask her to take action.

But if she did would Labour / Starmer listen to her.

Or maybe someone should start a petition on the Parliamentary Petitions web site, saying not sure what.

What would a petition say.

Can a Government tell funders who they should or shouldn't fund.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm ...............

What do you mean Brighton does not have a rape crisis centre? Isn't that the one Sarah attended that kicked off her case in the first place?

This case has no bearing on Sarah's case in Brighton.

Happy to agree it has no direct legal bearing. But in terms of what is seen as accepted good practice surely this case clarifies some reasonable expectations? Such as that it's not acceptable to obfuscate and refuse to tell women who attend a survivor's group whether or not they might find themselves in a mixed-sex group. It clarifies that survivors should have a right to know what kind of group they are attending. Sussex were not being clear about that at all. And as you say, this was not putting service users first.

Can we please make every effort to be accurate in what we say.

Irrespective of what any of us on FWR feel there is a structure of how things work that we cant ignore.

And no MSM is NOT the place to get information to understand what is going on in the voluntary and charity sector of which RCs etc., are part.

1. As the EHRC confirmed in the recent guidelines, jobs advertised as women only can either be trans inclusive or not. (Admittedly effing hard for anyone without a legal background to understand.)
2. Roz Adams case is important because she put SERVICE USERS FIRST. She accepted TW as part of the organisation but insisted that service users had to be told whether someone they might have contact with was or was not a TW.
3. So the case that she won was about bad employment practice and ethical running of the centre as she was bullied for putting service users first.

Non of us may like it, but the case was NOT about whether it is appropriate for a TW to work at a RCs let alone run one.

4. This case has no bearing on Sarah's case in Brighton. The reference to accepted guidelines in the report commissioned by RCS are for those federated to Rape Crisis Scotland and Rape Crisis England and Wales. Brighton does not have a rape crisis centre. Brighton council gave money to the Survivor's Network which is not a women let alone feminist organisation, and so is not obliged to work by Federation guidelines.

5. More women's services, whether RC or domestic violence projects have lost funding because councils accept reports from council officers that point out they are expensive to run. So if anyone of this thread or any other thread on FWR is worried about the loss of women's services, the majority of these are nothing whatsoever to do with TW, but to do with the concept of women needing services specific to women's experiences no longer has traction in the real world.

6. Both local councils and funding trusts can choose who they fund. They are not obliged to work to guidelines that grew out of the politics of the Women's Liberation movement half a century ago. We might want them to, but thanks to the male back lash against WLM, followed by the reactionary 3rd Wave feminism and then hordes of students educated in universities where queer politics infected anything means that yes, many people think caring let alone agitating on women's sex based rights is only of interest to ageing dinasours.

I am not understimating the incredible pressure that for instance the SNP in Scotland had, but the power of trans activism is built of the existing and re-empowered men's rights activism.

And I suspect even if in some idealised world, more of us spent less time on FWR (joke) and instead monitored our local council, and complained about cuts to women's services, I dont think that saying women think this is wrong with have any clout what so ever.

Lets face it, it is only because the culture of MRAs (junior branch the Incels) that the concept that TWAW could take hold. It is only because men, male culture thinks that even what a woman thinks is irrelevant that the idea that a man could say he was a woman could take hold.

If men, the patriarchy, had any respect for women this would have been laughed out of the public sphere as a silly student prank.

RedToothBrush · Today 11:56

I hope you don't mind, but I've linked your post to the Woman's Hour Twitter post, I found it a very impressive summary and thought that it could do with a wider audience.

IW seems more unhinged by the day.

Fuck it.

Absolutely disgusting misgendering language from trans hate mongerer

Mongerer is not a word.

@JKRowling

Oh, look, you've tagged JKRowling again, India. Did you mean to?

but sanctioned by all parts of the British Establishment.
The only ‘crime’ the CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis committed

He's committed a crime? What crime? He's been found to have discriminated against staff and badly mismanaged ERCC, but I wasn't aware he'd actually committed a crime?

was being trans in the UK - and catching the eye of the untouchable

That's an interesting word choice, India.

toxic Gender Critical movement. Once again, it’s the tiresome charade of Terfs targeting someone and screaming “women’s rights”

Screaming. Of course.

- with an innocent trans person losing their job, and being publicly demonised. Let me give you a quick sketch of what this is all about: Mridual Wadhwa

Mridul Wadhwa

, who’s trans, got the gig as CEO at Ed Rape Crisis - cue UK media outrage. Terfs spewed usual abuse for months.

Spewed. Of course.

A new terf starter infiltrates Ed Rape Crisis

Roz Adams was supportive of trans inclusion.

- starts trying to bring up Gender Critical themes.

RA tried to ensure a rape victim got the support she'd asked for, because RA's job was to support and help victims. I appreciate India struggles to understand this concept.

Staff immediately notice. Ed Rape Crisis start being deluged with calls (almost certainly from obsessive terfs doing an organised campaign) demanding to know the ‘birth sex’ of counsellors.

Evidence of this?

What am I thinking, of course not.

Call takers and others rightly tell them that’s private info, which it is. It’s illegal to ‘out’ a trans person’s past without their permission.

Bollocks it is.

CEO stands up for her staff’s right to privacy - CEO gets fired

Wadhwa stepped down.

, with UK establishment essentially saying being trans is akin to being a sex offender

Woah. Shark jumped.

- ‘women’ have a right to know your past. Trans are not entitled to privacy.

Shark does loop the loop.

I’m guessing someone who doesn’t like Gay or Lesbian people can also now say “I refuse to be treated/helped by them” or “They refused to give me personal info about being Gay/Lesbian” and also be backed up by UK courts etc. Yes? Or once again, does this solely apply to the trans population?'

Shark takes off into space, and dances with the aurora over Greenland.

RedToothBrush · Today 11:56

Thank you for putting that in chronological order, all of those wrongs, just so that he could indulge his fetish and carry out his domineering behaviour and bullying. It's shocking to see it bullet pointed like that, it should be sobering for any trans acolytes to read and understand the precise implications of it.

I can only hope that the high ups, who enabled him in his well paid abusive behaviour see it, or something similar. Also, someone with the power to discipline and sack them.

It's almost impressive how wrong India can be.

'Absolutely disgusting misgendering language from trans hate mongerer
@jk_rowling

• but sanctioned by all parts of the British Establishment. The only ‘crime’ the CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis committed was being trans in the UK - and catching the eye of the untouchable toxic Gender Critical movement. Once again, it’s the tiresome charade of Terfs targeting someone and screaming “women’s rights” - with an innocent trans person losing their job, and being publicly demonised. Let me give you a quick sketch of what this is all about: Mridual Wadhwa , who’s trans, got the gig as CEO at Ed Rape Crisis - cue UK media outrage. Terfs spewed usual abuse for months. A new terf starter infiltrates Ed Rape Crisis - starts trying to bring up Gender Critical themes. Staff immediately notice. Ed Rape Crisis start being deluged with calls (almost certainly from obsessive terfs doing an organised campaign) demanding to know the ‘birth sex’ of counsellors. Call takers and others rightly tell them that’s private info, which it is. It’s illegal to ‘out’ a trans person’s past without their permission. CEO stands up for her staff’s right to privacy - CEO gets fired, with UK establishment essentially saying being trans is akin to being a sex offender - ‘women’ have a right to know your past. Trans are not entitled to privacy. I’m guessing someone who doesn’t like Gay or Lesbian people can also now say “I refuse to be treated/helped by them” or “They refused to give me personal info about being Gay/Lesbian” and also be backed up by UK courts etc. Yes? Or once again, does this solely apply to the trans population?'

https://x.com/IndiaWilloughby/status/1834579640259596483

I see from that Vahanomy link that MW has also been an associate at the College of Policing.

Well that makes a lot of sense!

There's a diagnosis for that

I see from that Vahanomy link that MW has also been an associate at the College of Policing.

Maya Forstater said a couple of days ago this ideology is like bindweed. She was bang on. It spreads underground and then entwines itself in the roots of another organisation.

We will be years digging it out.

Pure gaslighting and power playing of the “How many fingers am I holding up Winston?” variety.

I see India Willoughby has been ranting about this today on X. Apparently it's all just a big conspiracy to get an innocent transwoman fired.

Women’s aid organisations and rape crisis centres have been set up with the blood, sweat, tears, and semen of women.

Fixed it for him.

' I grew up to a spiritual outlook that don't have a concept of guilt in the same way I think that has been the biggest gift. I don't know what it feels like to be guilty or ashamed for who you are.'

From the interview with Fox Fisher.