Another GC Employment Tribunal: Roz Adams vs Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre #5

[nauticant]

Roz Adams was employed by Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) as a counsellor. She is claiming constructive dismissal for Gender Critical (GC) beliefs. The CEO of ERCC is a well known transwoman known for, among other things, controversial "reframe your trauma" remarks.

There's live tweeting from https://twitter.com/tribunaltweets or if Twitter doesn't show the tweets, look at https://nitter.net/tribunaltweets. There's an informative substack here: https://tribunaltweets.substack.com/p/adams-vs-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre

This post explains how to get access to watch the hearing: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4988632-another-gc-employment-tribunal-roz-adams-vs-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-2?page=24&reply=132419912

Abbreviations:
J: Employment Judge McFatridge
RA: Roz Adams, the claimant
NC: Naomi Cunningham, barrister for the claimant
ERCC or R: Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, the respondent
DH: David Hay KC, barrister for the respondent
KM: Katy McTernan, ERCC Senior management
MR: Mairi Rosko, ERCC Board Member
MS: Miren Sagues, ERCC Board Member
KH: Katie Horburgh, ERCC Board Member
AB: ERCC staff member (name redacted)
NCi: Nico Ciubotariu, COO of ERCC
MW: Mridul Wadhwa, CEO of ERCC
BP: Beira's Place

RA gave evidence over 15-18 January 2024.

Witnesses:
Nicole Jones (NJ): 18 January 2024 (on behalf of RA)
Mairi Rosko (MR): 19 January 2024 (on behalf of ERCC)
Katy McTernan (referred to both as KT and KM): 22-23 January 2024 (on behalf of ERCC)
Miren Sagues (MS): 24 January 2024 (on behalf of ERCC)
Katie Horburgh (KH): 24 January 2024 (on behalf of ERCC)

Thread #1: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4985570-another-gc-employment-tribunal-adams-vs-edinburgh-rape-crsis
Thread #2: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4988632-another-gc-employment-tribunal-roz-adams-vs-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-2
Thread #3: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4990903-another-gc-employment-tribunal-roz-adams-vs-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-3
Thread #4: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4991883-another-gc-employment-tribunal-roz-adams-vs-edinburgh-rape-crisis-centre-4

what is ERCC's annual budget? does anyone know the precise numbers and grant-giving bodies?

Here
https://www.oscr.org.uk/about-charities/search-the-register/charity-details?number=SC006208

And here:

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC291742/filing-history

oh thank-you so much!

£2 million.... not a miniscule budget

Ignore the "honouring the views" stuff for a mo, what about the "make informed choices about their healing journey" bit? How the fuck are service users supposed to do that, when ERCC are refusing to provide an important bit of information about the support worker who is going to be working with them?

Katie Horsburgh's been cosying up to politician since she was a teenager.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-41257527

yes, because maybe she'll learn something through this trial and maybe she will reframe her attitude?
Is she any worse than the current crop in the Scottish (i assume she'd go the Holyrood route) parliament? they don't care about women. She must stand or fall on what she says/does, just like any other politician. Nobody has to vote for her if they don't want, but women are woefully underrepresented in politics, even if we don't agree with them, visibility leads to more coming up in the pipeline.

It’s religious guidance. You get the illusion of choice, but within tightly controlled options. If you stray from the permitted options you’re expelled from the community as an example so everyone else understands the consequences of breaching a commandment.

I need to catch up on this thread but in the meantime- Roz if you happen to be reading you are an amazing woman*. Your strength, your resilience and your integrity is inspiring.

*the old fashioned kind.

Did anyone mention the service users having to reframe their trauma?

All caught up. That went badly, for ERCC, both in terms of the tribunal and generally showing the organisation to be exceptionally badly governed and the CEO to be in entirely the wrong job.

I keep thinking of that Buckminster Fuller quote: 'You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.' This is really what ERCC, RCS, SG and others have tried to do in this area, except they spent all their time fighting reality and the new model is so shit it isn't going to make anything obsolete. Meanwhile JKR worked with others to set up Beira's Place so now as well as being absolutely crap at what they do there is almost no need for ERCC. Perhaps they can reinvent themselves / start being honest and focus on support for T and NB, but they definitely won't need £2 mill a year to do that, so the CEO will probably need a pay cut, although presumably not until every last employee has been made redundant.

What happens next?

I set my aspirations for politicians higher than the current crop of MSPs. And this is not about not agreeing, it is about integrity, considering all the evidence and critical thought. To support someone who lacks these things simply because they are from an underrepresented group mirrors the worst of the DEI excesses.

the quality of MPs is determined by the people who vote for them. Get better candidates then.

I prefer sunlight. The more people see this young woman regurgitating the propaganda she's been fed with, the better. If it takes her going into politics to get it out there, so be it.

one of the unintended consequences of the regional list system is that we can end up with absolutely dreadful candidates (one has been mentioned repeatedly on this and previous threads) getting a regional seat on a tiny slice of the vote, and they are basically unsackable.

Finally caught up after working all day yesterday - phew! I have a very strong sense that it’s all gone very badly for ERCC.

I do have a question about the proceedings though. I know this is only an ET not a criminal court, of course, but from reading TT I was surprised at the number of times a witness said “I wouldn’t like to comment on that”, “I’m not going to speculate on that”, “I don’t want to get drawn into that”, etc. Is that permitted? Do they not HAVE to answer the questions put to them? I only once noticed NC saying “just answer the question I’ve asked”.

I wondered that @Catabogus

I can only assume that NC allowed "non-answers" because they were even more self-condemnatory than any answer that they might have given. Surely otherwise NC would have insisted, and if necessary the judge would have directed the witnesses to answer.

I was following on and off through this thread and it was evident that the final witness (KH) was doing much better than the previous ones, because the commentary was reduced at times to making sideswiped at her mannerisms and her education.

I don't have to like her personally to be impressed by her performance, and I'm sure NC would be the first to acknowledge that she held up well. To win, you have to know your opponents' strengths just as well as you do your weaknesses.

I'm curious as to why ERCC saved their strongest witness until last. Maybe they too under estimated her because of her age or maybe they wanted to end on a stronger note.

Anyway thanks to everyone for the commentary.

This may not have been necessary to the case, but KH herself said how important it is to be clear and nuanced so I do think it's a pity that NC didn't get to ask her how ERCC achieves clarity with its service users (this being what RA's case is all about); and also to ask how much nuance was applied when that email was put in a file labelled "hate".

KH might not even have had been aware of the file, but having been told about it she could then apply her considerable energy to ensure that ERCC takes a more nuanced approach in future.

I think the best choice ERCC made was sheltering MW from being asked any questions, they clearly decided MW would be "worse than a man short" as the saying goes.

one of the unintended consequences of the regional list system is that we can end up with absolutely dreadful candidates (one has been mentioned repeatedly on this and previous threads) getting a regional seat on a tiny slice of the vote, and they are basically unsackable.

What makes you think it was unintended? Blair and Straw and the people involved in electoral reform discussions were absolutely wedded to the closed list system, despite every single report saying lists absolutely had to be open to avoid it. They did it in Scotland, and they did it in EU elections (they were required to have some sort of PR system for those, so made sure they got the worst.)

It was a totally foreseen consequence - so either the politicians didn't read any of the detailed reports produced, and just by chance happened to select this incredibly bad implementation, somehow avoiding all the good possibilities, or they read the reports and thought, "safe seats? that sounds marvellous! let's do it that way".

(So yes, I guess I am blaming Blair and Straw for this ERCC shitshow. I can bear an electoral reform grudge for decades. God they were fuckers.)

It looks as though Charites Commission is devolved and becomes Office of the Charity Regulator. It is possible they have been captured but after the verdict, I wonder if they might have no choice but to investigate. Perhaps a stack of complaints about ERCC might produce results.

Not minuscule, but not enormous either, not for a charity that's providing a labour-intensive service such as counselling across a city. The small to medium charity I was trustee for had a turnover of about a quarter of a million mainly to provide mandated services to the council and that was 20-odd years ago.

On the other hand EHRC did give the smallness of the charity as one reason for not intervening when MW was recruited. So how many of these charities are any bigger? Rape Crisis and VAWAG services mostly seem to run as a confederation of smallish charities.

I'm hoping this case, if won, will force other charities and authorities to review their EDI ethos. I believe money is withheld from some who are single sex, or those who don't have full TWAW. Didn't this happen in Brighton? Foggy memory but a women's service had to close because funds were withdrawn.

These cases should also be given extra weight to sex not gender. I hope the EHRC are keeping a close eye

It could also just be coincidence. I don't think you can truly tell how someone will hold up with a razor sharp barrister on their case until they're in the chair.