Mick Hartley

The Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, as we know, is run by trans woman Mridul Wadhwa, who was appointed to a woman's job despite having no gender recognition certificate. He made no secret of his aims, suggesting that women rape victims who objected to being dealt with by a man needed to reframe their trauma, and be "challenged on your prejudices". 

And now:

A rape crisis centre run by a trans woman has been “illegitimately” hiding the biological sex of its counsellors from victims of sexual assault, an employment tribunal has heard.

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, whose chief executive is Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman and activist, was said to have used “disciplinary processes to enforce its extreme and uncompromising version of gender identity theory”.

The case of constructive dismissal centres on Roz Adams, a support worker at the charity, who is claiming she was wrongly accused of “transphobia” and endured a nine-month disciplinary process. Adams now works at Beira’s Place, a centre funded by JK Rowling, offering “sexual violence support service for women — run by women.”

When she joined the rape crisis centre, Adams, 52, had welcomed its trans-inclusive policies, believing everyone who has “suffered sexual assault is entitled to support”, according to Naomi Cunningham, her barrister.

The dispute began when she consulted colleagues about a rape victim who had asked if her counsellor would be a “man or a woman” because she would feel “uncomfortable talking to a man”. It intensified when a non-binary member of the centre’s staff copied Wadhwa into an email chain and an investigation was launched into Adams’s conduct.

The rape crisis centre’s procedures were unacceptable, argued Cunningham, who is also chairwoman of Sex Matters, an organisation campaigning for clarity about sex in language, policy and law. She said: “If [the centre] is trying to justify using disciplinary processes to enforce its extreme and uncompromising version of gender identity theory, the tribunal has to ask: what is the aim? Is the aim legitimate and are the means chosen proportionate?

“It is for the tribunal to decide on that objective basis whether the aim of keeping the sex of support workers working with victims of rape secret from those service users is legitimate. I say it is clearly not a legitimate aim. It is hard to imagine an aim that is more illegitimate.”

In his closing remarks to the tribunal David Hay KC, defending the rape crisis centre, said there was no evidence of service users being disappointed by its services.

Cunningham suggested he was mistaken. In her written evidence Adams cited the case of a 60-year-old woman who was abused as a child and only “just begun [to] talk about it”. The woman approached the crisis centre about group work and asked: “Can you reassure me it is just a woman-only group?”

The woman was repeatedly told that such meetings were “trans-inclusive”.

Cunningham said: “The tone of the conversation changed and a few days later she got an email saying: ‘You are not suitable for our services.’”…

The tribunal had previously been told that Wadhwa told an audience that the “best way” to get staff to support trans inclusion policies was to “fire them”. Nicole Jones, a former student, told the hearing that the word “transphobes” was used in a “disparaging way”, adding: “She was asked what’s the best way to get staff on board with inclusion policies and she responded bluntly, ‘Fire them.’”

A rape crisis centre, to serve desperate women who've been subjected to male violence, appears to have been turned into an affirmation centre for transitioned men. The women are victims twice over.