Sarah Summers wins Single Sex provision for r*pe support in Brighton & Hove

I have been contributing to your crowdfunder and for me this outcome is better than a stand-up courtroom battle. I hope that the pilot is a "golden bridge" for Sussex and then for other support groups to show they can provide the services that women need and the sky doesn't fall!

Enjoy your holiday. You have more than earned it.

Very pleased for you Sarah. Enjoy your well deserved holiday with your family now.xx 👏👍

and it’s good you didn’t have to sign an NDA!

Excellent news!

Thank you, for having the courage to bring the case forward. I hope you trying to relax and take the time to recover from your experience.

i think it’s a good result - hopefully other organisations (in particular rape survivors services and dv refuges) will realise they can reinstate single sex provision without needing to be dragged through the courts. I hope it results in more resources being spent on the women who need them not lawyers!

Many well deserved congratulations, @iamsarah!

Their Twitter account seems to be down? Seems a bit coincidental if they are meant to be posting a statement?

Sarah I am delighted for you if you are happy with the result, but do you have any sense what will happen at the end of the 12 months?

This is so incredibly important for women and I am SO relieved and happy to hear this news. Sarah, you are a courageous and wonderful woman. Thank you!

Thank you so much for the warm wishes everyone. This feels like the best possible outcome. I felt like I had a good chance of winning the case but the judge could only have awarded me compensation, not ordered SN to run a single sex group.
I never wanted to bankrupt my local rape crisis centre and see them face down in the dirt. I doubt any feminist who donated towards my legal fees wanted that either.
SN wanted to find a way through. They are collaborating with local women and taking things forward in a positive and sensible way. Hopefully other rape crisis centres will follow suit.
I haven’t signed a NDA and have plenty more to say about it but I’m actually on holiday atm having a well deserved break!
Thanks again everyone I couldn’t have done it without the support of Mumsnet x

We're in a very different landscape to when Sarah started this court case, given the SC ruling that women-only means biological women.

You would hope that any decent lawyer would advise a similar service pretty quickly that they can't provide a service they call "women only" if it includes transwomen.

And, where organisations are funded to provide services for women they have to actually do that.

So actually I am not sure what they mean(!)

There is (or was) a separate LGBT group. They say they are adding to the existing provision not taking anything away, so if the new women-only group doesn't include transmen then at least the mixed-sex LGBT group, and possibly also the men's group (depending on the law and as long as men don't complain...) will still be available.

Amazing brilliant fantastic wonderful news!
well done Sarah and everyone involved!

Brilliant news! Well done to Sarah and all who've supported her.

It does seem like a fairly shallow win.

I'm glad, of course, that Sarah and other women in Brighton will now have a single sex provision, but by settling rather than awaiting a court outcome - which whilst not precedent setting it would send out a warning shot to other providers - does this mean other women facing the same problem in their local survivor services will now need to initiate their own legal action? I worry they'll get less support as I do think most women who contribute to crowdfunders do so because they want those cases heard in court, and settling (especially when there's an NDA, obviously no idea if that's the case here) doesn't feel like justice done and doesn't have the same impact.

I cant see how they can exclude women with a mans gender identity? I thought they may be able to exclude them if the individual by cause distress?

If the service was for 'biological women who identify as women and biological women who identify as men', then all biological women with no gender identity would be excluded. It is clumsy wording. Transmen absolutely should have provision, I agree.

Winning this case the first time it went to court wouldn't have set a legal precedent, that's not how it works.

No precedent would have been set unless Survivor's Network won the first round, Sarah appealed and then subsequently won in a higher court.

Given how retraumatising and stressful it would be to drag the case out even further, to endure a loss and then have to go through it all again with no certainlty of winning the appeal, this really isn't something I would wish on Sarah.

It will have cost Survivor's Network A LOT of money in legal fees to get this far, only to have to concede to what Sarah wanted all along.

It's defnitely a win, even if we don't get to enjoy the drama of a court case at Sarah's expense.

Well done Sarah.

Justice prevails

They should have caved when she first raised the problem. Awful that t Sarah has had to go through this process to get fair treatment. But very good news at last. Well done if you are reading this and a big thank you from women survivors of rape in your area.

The crowdfunder site hasn't been updated yet, I'm sure it will!

She wasn't far off the court date so I expect a lot of the money has been paid to her legal team already. I may be misremembering but I think the crowdfunder site only allows money to go directly to her legal team and any leftovers have to be allocated to other legal cases on the same site.

Otherwise her own crowdfunder says "If I am awarded any compensation, I will donate it to a VAWG charity that supports single sex spaces. To me this case is about protecting women’s rights to safe spaces."

No they can run any service they want. They just cant run a service and say it is women only and include trans women.

The court ruling was in relation to the use of the work sex in the Equality Act.

Basically the ruling just says false advertising is not legal.

Excellent news, well done Sarah. I'm so sorry that you had to go this far to get the service that you entitled to.