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

[GargoylesofBeelzebub]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13842189/Edinburgh-Crisis-Centre-designed-protect-women-suffered-sexual-violence-condemned-failing-damning-report.html

Pretty scathing. Wadhwa cannot stay surely?

This is one of the most revealing parts of the interview because it deflects from any wrongdoing on the part of ERCC and RCS and instead blames external factors. It reveals her true feelings about it all.

And that letter in the Scottish Parliament archive? She wasn't present at that meeting? Despite her partner and her actual body being there.

In other circumstances, I'd be charmed by a Schrödinger's cat defence but this is deplorable and readily falsifiable. Is she banking on only a small number of people knowing about HEAL?

Whatever damage limitation Brinkley is attempting now, if this is the best available, it means she's insensate to ongoing events. She has a network so sharp that multiple people spontaneously contact a journalist within 30mins of learning of an interview but co-simultaneously so unhelpful that, for several years, it didn't pass along reports of there being substantial problems at ERCC and RCS to the point where JKR financed Beira's Place.

Straining credulity doesn't begin to cover this.

This is the section that gets me:

Ms Brindley said the controversy had led to rape survivors who supported the charity experiencing "horrendous" abuse online, including being told that they "must be lying" about being raped.

"It is absolutely astonishing to me that this is the position we're in where rape survivors can be treated in this way in the name of women's rights supposedly," said Ms Brindley.

"I think the onus is on me as chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland and on the rape crisis movement to try and move to a place where Rape Crisis is not being weaponised in the way it has."

She stressed that rape survivors could rely on the charity and that it would meet their needs.

Ms Brindley also addressed the comments made by Ms Wadhwa in the podcast, saying: "I do not think the word ‘bigot’ and ‘rape survivor’ should be used in the same sentence.

"When that podcast came out, Mridul assured us that her comments had been taken out of context - that she hadn’t intended them to refer to rape survivors that wanted a single-sex service."

1. Where the fuck has Ms Brindley been in the last few years?

2. Who is she actually blaming for weaponising this? I'd like it said explicitly. Who treated rape survivors in this way in the name of women's rights? SAY IT OUT LOUD

3. Then WHO WAS IT AT THE MEETING THAT IS DOCUMENTED IN THE SCOTTISH ARCHIVES? WHO INVITED THEM? AND WHAT DID THEY SAY? WERE THEY WEAPONISING IT?

4. Why didn't Wadhwa go after the podcast? It clearly raised issues, if Wadhwa then had to say 'it was taken out of context'. Well clearly that was a bloody lie - I mean Wadhwa's subsequent actions say they damn well meant it in the way it was said and wasn't taken out of context.

5. Who was running around telling people that Single Sex Services were illegal? And who was not correcting this? Given its a fairly fundamental exception in law for this area of work - one you'd expect the Head of Rape Crisis Scotland to be well versed in.

None of this is satisfactory.

As the head of this time of organisation you should be fully alert to 'infiltration' by individuals who have nefarious objectives, because you are dealing with very vulnerable women. This seems to be an alien concept.

Not only that but its very clear that Brindley is massively out of touch with social media and out of touch with grassroots.

When a grassroots organisation tried to approach her, not only did she not listen then but she CONTINUES TO ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR EXISTENCE! I mean wtf.

I thought a fairly fundamental thing in supporting rape victims was to believe them and validate them. You aren't the law, so you don't have the situation of judging whether a crime occured or not. You just support the individual.

Yet here we are and a group which had a meeting over these issues and HAVE A LETTER DATED AND ARCHIVED WITH THE SCOTTISH PARLIAMENT seem to have escaped Brindley memory.

Or are we supposed to believe they are all liars and it was all a stitch up when they wrote the letter?

I just have no words for that section of the interview.

There was ample opportunity TWO MONTHS after Wadhwa was employed to go huh? with that podcast.

Brindley was too busy in lala land listening to Stonewall Law and her girlfriends lectures.

It's in the telegraph but it's very light on details
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/19/scotland-rape-charity-head-victims-counselling/

The BBC article linked above says “Ms Wadhwa was living as a woman in her native India before arriving in the UK in 2002. Her passport said she was female.”

“She has been working in the the (sic) violence against women and equality sectors in Scotland since 2005.”

”In a 2020 interview with The Ferrett news service, she said that coverage of claims she was “legally male” had unleashed “a host of hate” and that the focus on having a gender recognition certificate was racist as well as transphobic because it failed to take in Indian cultural norms.”

It doesn’t explicitly say that Wadhwa doesn’t have a GRC and (IIRC) she has no qualifications to work as a counsellor. If anything the article implies the opposite, and I think they are both important factors.

Ms Brindley said the controversy had led to rape survivors who supported the charity experiencing "horrendous" abuse online, including being told that they "must be lying" about being raped.

Who is she talking about here? And what does she mean rape survivors who supported the charity? Shouldn't it be the other way round?

Indeed.

And this is more DARVO.

Deflection from the actual verifiable women who have been harmed by the actual ERCC. Not just women supposedly being trolled online, women being harmed by the very people who they went to for help.

It's a really sick attempt to spin her way out of what her predecessor presided over.

This is the same Sandy Brindley and a separate employment tribunal:
https://tfn.scot/news/leading-scots-charity-ordered-to-pay-51000-to-employee-it-unfairly-dismissed

Who fuck turns around and saying a tribunal contains numerous factual errors after it's conclusion unless you have the ego the size of a planet and are tone deaf to the point of insanity.

This woman wouldn't know how to take responsibility if it hit her in the face.

She's talking about the "survivors" who emailed a journalist who had half an hour previously interviews Sandy Brindley saying how marvellous she is and how she shouldn't be sacked.

They supposedly were not told about the interview by Sandy but just somehow heard about it, you know, from people and off their own back (sic) completely independently decided to email.

They didn't like being quizzed about how they had found out about the interview on Twitter once they realised how bad it looked.

And clearly that trauma is far worse than a rape survivor being asked if they orgasmed during their rape by a man dressed as a woman. 🤔

And clearly that trauma is far worse than a rape survivor being asked if they orgasmed during their rape by a man dressed as a woman.

I will never stop loathing these people.

I assume she means the group of women survivors who contacted the journalist half an hour after she spoke to Brindley to give plaudits.

These women were all users of rape crisis services; it's not clear whether some or all of them now work.for Brindley.

It's unacceptable that they appear to have been asked to shield Brindley from criticism by speaking about their sensitive personal histories.

But she was the one who weaponised them....

It’s unbelievable that this Monster will remain in post. What does it take to get someone like this removed , sacked really, all the funding going her/their way, someone need to look at fraud that’s the only way to get her out, she will carry on and this will go on and on and on……infinity, sick 🤢

Got it. It's her inappropriate use of women, whether rape survivors, or her mates, which is leading people to speculate. And now she's going off alarming about that too.

If this refers to dobt being cast on the people who 'spontaneously' wrote emails in her defense, doesn't this imply she knows the identity of those people?
They could be anyone online, but she knows they are rape survivors. She knows who they are.
And they weren't supporting the charity, they were supporting her. There's always that little twist of the facts to hide the truth for personal gain.

Every time she says anything she gives the game away a little more.

she can’t stay in post.

if she stays in post we must assume she knows a lot of things that some people would prefer are kept quiet.

Has Maggie Chapman, ex COO, current MSP and all-round-gender-zealot, said anything so far?

What an abomination of a woman. So it was weaponised, does she not have the brains to even wonder why it needed to be “weaponised.”

She sat there doing fuck all whilst Rome burned and then has had the audacity to point the finger at it being weaponised rather than stop it happening in the first place.

These people are used to mental gymnastics and to lying in the face of objective fact (TWAW), for others to either cheer or politely accept the lies, and for any dissent to be shushed / dismissed / blocked. Brindley not resigning is part of the same pattern.

That ^^

Someone highly experienced in enforcing a personal reality on others and just blithely denying any facts that aren't useful to them is not going to be able to be rational about anything at all. Someone prepared to do this at all is not a person who should be in any position of responsibility. Or providing a service to the general public.

This ideology is fundamentally incompatible with doing a job like this, in a way that no other belief system is. You cannot hold these beliefs and at the same time be objective and unprejudiced, or capable of engaging with reality as it is. The two things cannot happen in the same space.

RedToothBrush · Today 07:30

But she was the one who weaponised them....

And she's got the brass neck to pretend that some big kids did it and ran away. Surely she can't really be so lacking in self-awareness?

Yes, she was. She's damning herself further with every utterance.

I don't know if any of those women might be reading on the subject, so I am careful in what I say. I have no wish to cause them further trauma, but I hope that at some point it becomes clear that this woman who purports to support and champion them has in fact unfairly used them in a horrible way.

She has put them between herself and the public to try to deflect and absorb inevitable backlash.

It's unprofessional, it lacks boundary awareness, it's ineffective - but most of all it's thoughtless about their wellbeing, and given the circumstances and context that is cruel.

Survivors deserve dignity, respect, compassion and a clear awareness of boundaries and appropriate behaviour. They deserve care and support.

An ethical position would have been not to disclose the interview at all, and/or to refuse any offers of help from survivors.

That would have meant taking responsibility for the failures. Which would have been hard, but the only correct thing to do.

Because it's clear that here the power balance is wrong, the dynamic is wrong and the whole process has got skewed and distorted.

RCS is not a body that is there to protect and support its CEO; that's back to front.

No one in the women's sector should replicate the dynamic of manipulator and flying monkeys. Its unconscionable. They are supposed to have training to recognise unhealthy dynamics.

I'd imagine someone at Brindley's level is probably giving the training.

Didn't they used to have a buddy system, and have counselling themselves for support and accountability? I wonder when that stopped.