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

I only drink coffee.

A couple of years old, but worth a glance

https://thecritic.co.uk/unclean/

No, but here it was Linked directly to the sex of the person.
Grammatical gender is also directly Linked to which sex a human or Animal is, as well as more randomly «assigned» to various nouns. According to which sex you are talking about, you must use correct endings (and in some languages Modal verbs or possessives).
According to the gender of the noen this us also true,
but the discrepancy for a native speaker is even MORE jarring if you get it wrong when the grammatical connection is because of the actual sex. You’d never say: the cow, he is giving us milk. Or the mare, he is having a foal. It’s at that level. At least in my language.

Someone linked to Leigh Downes bio in the other thread and this stood out for me….

The overarching aim of my work is to document and honour the lived complexities, struggles of, and impacts on, survivors of violence who are marginalised by the criminal legal system and systemic oppression including: anti-authoritarian social movements…

I’m taking a leap thinking that LD doesn’t do irony (or maybe they do) in reconciling this support whilst simultaneously adopting an authoritarian stance in using the power of the crowd and public humiliation to dictate Jo’s speech and actions.

Also, why do so many gender ideologues work with sexual assault and DV survivors? Do both involve a need for power? Certainly the former involves a desire to compel the speech and freedoms of others (the non-believers). But I don’t understand the draw to work in areas such as supporting rape victims when you don’t believe in the reality of sex. That’s just odd. Or disturbing.

yes that is really true. I am thinking about some of the narrative around about Paula Vennells. Comments I have heard (and have sat on) about 'this is what happens when you do a diversity hire'.

The appalling fuckups countless men have done over the years in all sorts of spheres just becomes white noise while a spectacular female fuckup is used as an example.

Not sure I am expressing that well.

@DrBlackbird I deliberately missed out Downes from my list as I thought they were quite pathetic. Quite rightly the judgement highlights how unsuitable a person Downes was to be appointed as EDI lead! I expect them to have had a cry and gone for another walk rather than attempt any critical thinking (though I doubt Downes can even bare to read the judgement).

I know what you mean. Men fuck up and it's "he's useless". A woman fucks up and it's "all women are useless"

Added to the thing where already failing companies appoint a new CEO/CFO and within a year it goes down the toilet and it's all "see, women AREN'T as good as men" even though nobody could have saved that company at that stage

Spot on @Brefugee

I think it's as simple as vulnerable people are generally speaking more easy to coercively control / compel their speech etc.

It's awful, people who may already have issues with establishing firm boundaries are being used to help establish an incoherent ideology that will further harm them.

Downes didn't care about honouring Jo's lived complexities. What word salad nonsense that bio is. As well as obvious lies. Downes didn't care about marginalising Jo or creating an atmosphere in which she received death threats. What a pile of total wank.

I think Downes (as EDI lead and backed by Drake) felt it was their duty to bully and harass Jo.

I agree both odd and disturbing (all 368 of them and backed by OU management still)

Downes' OU work does seem in stark contrast to Downes' actions.

Leigh Downes, co-author of: Teaching Emotionally Challenging Topics: An educator’s guide to supporting emotional resilience skills in higher education

https://oro.open.ac.uk/92494/1/Educators%20guide%20v2.pdf

Admonitions here:

Dr Downes says:
“Not surprisingly, we found that many students expected to study sensitive and emotive topics in criminology. In fact, the ability to engage with difficult topics was considered an important employability skill for students who currently worked, or aspired to work, with people in contact with the criminal justice system.”
[Downes] says that some are even studying as a deliberate means to understand what may have happened to them in the past.
“Educators therefore need to be aware that someone with lived experience of a case study or topic they are teaching will be in their classroom, be it a virtual, print, or face-to-face relationship.
“Whilst students commonly reported feeling sad and upset this was often accompanied by acknowledgements of how engaging with these case studies also benefited them.
“Benefits included gaining a deeper understanding, an ability to look at a situation differently and a reminder of their purpose and motivation for study. Engaging with sensitive content could also spark a passion and curiosity to find out more and make sense of the world around them.”

Familiar pieties here about kindness, how to address conflict, transformative justice in another report: How to Address Harm

Cultivating safety and care in this way is not new and, as Dean Spade has argued, mutual aid has been a long-term survival strategy for marginalised communities…Crucially these projects focus on providing care, safety and support outside state institutions due to lived experience of state failures and structural violence.
…
Transformative justice tools, like pod mapping…offer practical steps to develop a collective response to interpersonal violence. The idea here is for us to identify who our ‘pod people’ are (who we can rely on for help when we are harmed and when we harm others) and cultivate a network or ‘pod’ to address low-level conflicts before they escalate into harm and violence.

https://fass.open.ac.uk/news/everybody-needs-good-neighbours-especially-now

prounouns - As you say, little evidence Downes considered structural violence to Jo Phoenix. Or reflected on Downes' own challenges to students to reflect on how engagement with distressing material might benefit them and their intellectual development and personal resilience.

NB: Yes, you may need to click the author's name if you need reassurance about the 'correct' Downes. Be assured that it brings you to this profile:

https://fass.open.ac.uk/people/jd23778 Edit

I think this is because there are far fewer women at these levels. I suspect it’s the same for any minority group - eg “this is why hiring a black person wasn’t a good idea”, “I knew we shouldn’t have hired a disabled person”, etc. When it’s a white man - well, there are so many of them there already, it can’t be seen to reflect badly on the whole lot so it must be “one bad apple” etc.

Edited for typos!

Otherwise known as the glass cliff. Give a woman the job knowing it will fail and she will be blamed

I refer to a post I made much much earlier about how pronouns are not about identity (they aren't used by those who change them) they are about power and control (it's about making other people use them)

Repeat after me:

I refer to a post I made much much earlier about how pronouns are not about identity (they aren't used by those who change them) they are about power and control (it's about making other people use them)

Someone I know recently transitioned (MtF). I say "transitioned", but as far as I can tell there are no changes at all, not even to his clothing style, and he looks just as male as ever - but we are all expected to use his new name and call him "she". I feel coerced into lying, into playing along with his delusion that he is a woman.

If he was a religious fundamentalist, or a flat-earther, we could probably just avoid those topics, but it's very difficult to be around someone and never use pronouns.

From a post on Roll On Friday:

The solution to this issue is very simple.
Abolish the GRA, and the legal fiction that humans can change sex,
Include express statutory provisions with a schedule of situations where single-sex spaces and activities may be retained, notwithstanding any person's Gender Identity.
Can anyone tell me what would be wrong with that?

Edited to embolden text

Also linked by a post on Roll On Friday

https://ounews.co/around-ou/ou-speaks-out/a-statement-from-professor-tim-blackman-vice-chancellor-of-the-open-university-regarding-the-recent-employment-tribunal-judgment/

That is a very different tone to the initial statement. So glad they have apologised to Jo.

A vast improvement - an apology is great, but it’s now vital that they stamp out this culture of bullying of anyone who has a basic grasp of biology.

I can't shake the feeling that that may have been legally drafted and may reflect negotiations for a settlement with JP to which we're not privy. (Why didn't the OU lawyers get involved much earlier rather than listen to them now?)

It's better than the previous response. But as we know from this tribunal, it matters who is appointed to conduct the "independent review" - the ilk of Akua Reindorf or the 'overly persuaded of their competence' ERCC trustees or 'Great and the Good' like Ruth Hunt?

I think you are right it might be the start of a negotiated settlement.

This reminds me, still crickets from SWE?

@Emotionalsupportviper thing is ignoring the GRA for a moment these provisions already exist, in the EQA and are having to be case by case, re-asserted in the courts which is happening.

What has been going on is playing with the common meaning of words, to suit the TRA agenda.

The EQA needs firming up to make clear what male and female as a protected sex means, ie biological sex, that which has been determined/established, by a qualified medical person, at birth/and or in vitro.

The job of determining the law and advising government is the responsibility of the equalities commission but as demonstrated in the past it has been incorrectly swayed.

The Equalities Act should therefore, as you state needs to also include some examples of sex based reserved services, single sex facilities, education etc.

And also flowing from that what a gender identity means in law and the parameters of what that should entitle a non conforming individual, to be legally entitled to under the Equalities Act, and what they can be lawfully excluded from in terms of biologically reserved spaces.

No small order

If they got the Equalities Act firmed up then the GRA would just fade into obscurity, as some laws just do without repeal.

Happy to hear disagreement BTW

Google the glass cliff. It's a thing. It's interesting that "oh men have fucked this up comprehensively, let's try a woman" is a thing, and unsurprising that when that woman is unable to rescue things, she gets blamed.

Interesting and unsurprising though it may be, it still makes me SPIT WITH RAGE AND ANGER.