I feel sorry for Brindley. It can't be easy working in a sector that invovles such heavy responsibility; the care and support of so many women who are so sorely in need. And public scrutiny must be difficult.
So I don't want to pile opprobrium on her. But I do want to make an observation about her suitability for the position that she is in, and has been in for a long time.
"Last Friday, Sandy Brindley, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, was collecting her daughter from primary school when a journalist rang to ask if she would comment on JK Rowling’s demand for her resignation. By the time the reporter hung up, Brindley was in tears.
“I’m never upset in front of my daughter. She said, ‘What’s wrong?’” Brindley recalls. “I said, ‘Someone’s calling for my resignation’.
You just don't go into it, do you? Your first priority is to shield your child. You'd answer with a deflection or minimising or reassuring answer, yes? A child doesn't even know what 'resignation' means, surely?
Either she's made the story up for effect or she really does have an odd way of parenting. Either way, the use of a child as a narrative prop, or a counsellor is inappropriate.
She asked: ‘Who?’ I told her: ‘JK Rowling.’”
Brindley’s little girl looked up at her and said: “That’s one of my favourite authors, Mummy.”
By now Brindley’s eyes are twinkling as she recounts the incident. “What I didn’t then say was: ‘Well, it’s me or her!” she says, dissolving into laughter.
So the suggestion is that she's jealous of her daughter's liking JKR. Suggesting her daughter must make a choice between them, to soothe her own ego. It's not the funny self-observation of vulnerability it's presented as, I think, just another example of her ego being put before the wellbeing of others.
Placing responsibility for her feelings on the child. Just as she passed responsibility for her defense onto rape survivors (and/or her colleagues, the relationship was unclear - either way, people she was in a relationship with where she held the balance of the power differential).
This woman is incapable of taking responsibility, it seems. So I have some sympathy for her but it becomes clearer with every passing day that she is not suited for the role she is in.