Edinburgh rape crisis centre “doubled down” on defence of trans boss after damning tribunal ruling

[IwantToRetire]

Newly-released documents show that Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) privately claimed that the conduct of Mridul Wadhwa had been “misrepresented” at an employment tribunal.

A ruling had found that Ms Wadhwa, a biological male who identified as female, had been the “invisible hand” behind a “heresy hunt” against support worker Roz Adams, who was hounded out of the organisation due to her gender-critical beliefs.

Correspondence released under Freedom of Information laws shows that Ms Wadhwa briefed officials in the Scottish Government, which ERCC relies upon for funding, about the outcome of the case.

It shows that the centre claimed the chief executive’s conduct at a University of Edinburgh event, in which she allegedly said “firing can be as important as hiring” to create “inclusive” spaces, “was misrepresented at the tribunal”.

The centre added that it was looking into launching an appeal despite comprehensively losing the case.

Article continues at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/28/edinburgh-rape-crisis-doubled-down-on-trans-boss-foi/

(Sorry to start another thread but there are so many I didn't know which one to add it to - well not when its late and I'm tired)

In case it disappears behind a pay wall also can be read at https://archive.is/ziJVg

these nutters really do live in a parallel universe. Not surprising I suppose given that if you really believe TWAW then any and every other sort of total bollocks becomes credible. How much longer before this fucking nonsense gets in the bin?

It's hardly surprising at all. After apologising Brindley said:

There is no inherent reason within that, that you could not have a trans person working within a rape crisis centre.

She also doubled down. They were a very toxic combination. I find it chilling that he was so chummy with the government.

If they think Wadhwa was misrepresented at the tribunal why didn't he attend to defend his postition . . .

It shows that the centre claimed the chief executive’s conduct at a University of Edinburgh event, in which she allegedly said “firing can be as important as hiring” to create “inclusive” spaces, “was misrepresented at the tribunal”.

If someone has a different version of events, then it's traditional in legal proceedings to put themselves forward as a witness and present it. If it's plausible then there's a decent chance it will be taken as the definitive version.

You can't go avoiding legal proceedings (particularly because attending is likely to damage your case) and then complain about a tribunal not taking into account the evidence you chose not to present.

Didn't some of the FOI requests reveal extremely chummy email exchanges between government staff and MW? It's just sickening that women were an afterthought and everyone was in thrall to this person. Ugh.

So who is paying for this appeal? How much have they spent on legal fees and damages (and diversity consultants) so far? Zealotry at its finest.

To be honest, I don't disagree with Brindley here.

No reason why trans women cannot work in any therapeutic or clinical settings. No reason why trans women cannot be doctors or therapists or councillors - every client should be able to select who they work with that best suits them, and there are plenty of trans women who need these services, and apparently, plenty of women who would happily accept a trans woman where they would not accept men.

The problem surely comes when women who would not want to see a trans woman therapist, or doctor, or whatever, are called bigots and denied services.

The problem comes when trans women like MW refuse to disclose that they are actually men to potential clients, who have been traumatised by men and have every right to refuse to work through their trauma with a trans woman simply because they believe trans women are men.

Good luck with their appeal. More light on the issue. Get MW to give evidence this time. Let MW get on the stand and be honest about how traumatised women were further deceived by a rape crisis service.

Haven't they left it a bit late to appeal? Maybe it's different in Scotland but ISTR after the Forstater, Bailey, Phoenix tribunals they only had a few weeks to give notice of this?

No reason why trans women cannot work in any therapeutic or clinical settings. No reason why trans women cannot be doctors or therapists or councillors - every client should be able to select who they work with that best suits them, and there are plenty of trans women who need these services, and apparently, plenty of women who would happily accept a trans woman where they would not accept men.

I disagree. The single sex exception needs to be clear. I don't believe they should ever be able to be treated as a type of woman for the purposes of a legal sex based exception.

Obviously they should be able to work in a fully mixed environment, or a male one, if they wish.

It shows that the centre claimed the chief executive’s conduct at a University of Edinburgh event, in which she allegedly said “firing can be as important as hiring” to create “inclusive” spaces, “was misrepresented at the tribunal”.

This was mentioned in the recent hearing to determine what ERCC should pay out. I'll see if I can find the Tribunal tweets record.

When it comes to therapy, honesty is paramount. pretending to be something you are no isn't being honest, it’s downright deceptive. Service users in a female rape crisis centre should not have to even consider that there may be males working in or using the same service. The only way to ensure that is to make them single sex. I’d go so far as to say that in these circumstances, transmen should also be excluded as the presence of someone who looks / presents as male is also unacceptable.
If there is a demand for similar services for trans people, then that should be addressed and those services provided. Women fought long and hard for this provision, now it’s the turn of men to do the same for their sex.

Absolutely, I slightly revise my original post, women only services like Beira's Place should be clearly signposted as just that.

I think those like MW like to present themselves as being barred from working full stop because they are trans - this paints them as victims of discrimination and people who only have an eye for the headlines feel sympathy for them, but this is not the case.

Trans women like MW are barred from working with women who do not want to work with men in this context, because they are men. And any woman has a right, by law, to believe trans women ARE men. This is different from what is being claimed.

So it's important to point out that there are plenty of opportunities for people like MW, to work with men, trans women or consenting women, but it is actually MW who is refusing to be inclusive in practice.

😜- I don't know where this emoji came from and I cannot get rid of it!! It seems very flippant at the end of this post - not my intention......

When you say "work in any setting" are you not ignoring the section of the Equality Act relating to female only exemptions in some workplaces? In those places, I don't think the onus should be on service users (women and girls) to have to check the sex of the person providing the service.

Just a reminder, which has been said on other threads, many rape crisis centres not only work with / for trans women, but also men!

Roz Adams was happy to work with trans women.

What she objected to, and as the post up thread said, is lying to women service users, who have specifically said they only want to work with, get support from a biological woman.

And again, to repeat what has been said on other threads, currenlty whether you like it or not, the EA means that on occassion women only can include trans women (remember the thread about the EHRC guidelines on "discriminatory" ads) but can also mean only biological women.

And again as has been said on other threads, the problem is
1 that how services are advertised are not clear, and a woman in a state of trauma isn't going to look at the small print and see is it advertised under whichever if the relevant clause
2 (as in ERCC) some people deliberately lie, decieve both employees and service users, by insisting women only always means trans inclusive.

Just because a service may also support trans women, doesn't mean women wanting genuinely women only services need to have any contact or interaction with them.

The point of the Roz Adams employment case was that her employer tried to bully her into agreeing to a policy that wasn't even based on legal facts, let alone the organisations aims.

Just recently, on another thread but cant remember which one, I posted the link to an article which reported Kemi Badenoch talking about ERCC and she was extremely clear about employers trying to manipulated situations. And she pointed the finger at politicians.

As she showed in her web chat yesterday, she certainly seems to be someone who can grasp facts, and articulate them clearly.

NB - article doesn't not say that ERCC HAS started legal proceedings. I suspect this is just TRAs filling the virtual world with their usually we are the most marginalised group, we are always the victim.

And that whoever passed the info on to the Telegraph is a way of making public that even when straight forward facts are dealt with in a legal setting the trans evangialists will still say it wasn't fair.

Apart from, as commented up thread, the sheer stupidity of saying that when you haven't bothered to go to court and present your side of the arguement. Or submitted a written statement because you are so traumatised by being taken to court that you cant face being in court.

Raising concerns that self-ID policy is still being promoted by public bodies, charities and employers in Scotland despite sex in the Equality Act referring to biological sex, Ms Badenoch said: ‘This issue with Rape Crisis Scotland is an example of what happens when people do not actually look at what the law says and start bringing in policy that is derived from campaign groups.

‘Many of the campaign groups try to rewrite policy that is not what the law says and I think that Rape Crisis Scotland got very muddled in its understanding of what provisions it needed to provide.

‘There are a lot of people who have gone into these organisations not to serve the women but to deal with their own political agenda or to push forward their own political campaigning...We need to get the politics out of a lot of service provision.’

She added: ‘We need to get the concept of self-ID out of a lot of public policy-making where people think that is what the law is. That is how we ended up with the Isla Bryson case, where we had a rapist going into a women’s prison.

‘It is very dangerous, it is bad for women...I’m actually quite worried we have policy-makers who don’t understand.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14008407/SNP-failed-women-Kemi-Badenochs-warning-dangerous-gender-self-ID-agenda-peddled-ministers.html

When you say "work in any setting" are you not ignoring the section of the Equality Act relating to female only exemptions in some workplaces? In those places, I don't think the onus should be on service users (women and girls) to have to check the sex of the person providing the service.

I agree. The single sex exceptions apply to all males except those with a GRC, unequivocally. They have been flagrantly misused and misrepresented for years. Female only should mean that, or at the very least only males with a gender recognition certificate should even be considered to meet the criteria. That's under the current law, obviously I'd like it to go further and be truly female only.

The single sex exceptions apply to all males except those with a GRC, unequivocally.

Sorry no, the whole point of the SSE are that this is the one case where even TW with a GRC CAN be excluded.

But you have to show that it is "proportional".

One of the problems with ERCC is that they were on one hand on their website "trans inclusive" etc, but on the other acting as if their service was women only and specifically instructed their counsellors to tell service users that "no men were working there" (AB, who caused the trouble, was "non binary" so didn't consider herself either female or male). Wadhwa was a "woman".

Roz Adams sent AB a polite email asking her how to answer this question asked by a service user and all hell broke loose. A lot of these situations which end up in the courts seem to revolve around individuals with "non binary" gender identity.

Sorry no, the whole point of the SSE are that this is the one case where even TW with a GRC CAN be excluded.

Yes, IWTR. They can. They don't have to be. Hence, unequivocally all other men should be excluded by default. It's up to the service provider whether to exclude men with GRCs, if they choose to.

on the other acting as if their service was women only and specifically instructed their counsellors to tell service users that "no men were working there"

That was because those in decision making positions were abusing them to forward their personal agenda. That TWAW.

In terms of the law, services provision under SSE, and in fact the guidelines that their membership of the federated RCCs in Scotland was an out right lie.

And as most of us here know, there are lots of practical issues with excluding males with GRCs, because there are privacy clauses.

This keeps coming up on threads.

Again if the organisation is genuinely advertising women only (in the biolotical sense) services, and their advertising of jobs makes that clear, any TW attempting to lie about who they really are, could be summarily sacked. ie as their employment contract says it is a condition of their employment.

Obvioulsy all of this nonsense is caused by the GRA impinging on the protected characteristic of Sex in the EA, which does not occur in any other way.

And it may well be that the proposals Kemi Badenoch was saying she was working on until suddenly there was an election, might have found a simpler way of dealing it.

This keeps coming up on threads.

Yes, it's been coming up on threads here for years, because it's an issue. The EA took the GRA into consideration in the protected characteristic of sex because the GRA predated the EA. There are some excellent threads about TRA campaigns and lobbying in the run up to the EA, to make sure they got what they wanted. Some weren't happy that it was possible to exclude GRA holders in any circumstances at all.

I sometimes wonder whether they have Stockholm syndrome. Or simply whether the rest of the world is insane. Yes of course he should have appeared before the ET. Please tell me it's too late now to appeal