Mick Hartley

The latest on the troubled Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, from the Times:

The chief executive of a rape crisis support centre has been put on leave pending an investigation into its “Kafkaesque” treatment of staff.

Mridul Wadhwa, a man who identifies as a woman, was sent home in May by the board of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) after being identified as the “invisible hand” behind a “heresy hunt” designed to force out Roz Adams, a counsellor with gender-critical views.

The outcry over Wadhwa’s behaviour intensified following the sentencing this week of Cameron Downing, a coercive and manipulative male sex offender, who identified as non-binary and claimed to have received extensive support from ERCC.

After Downing, an SNP equalities officer, was convicted of multiple sexual offences, the author JK Rowling said: “That a male sexual predator was able to access the services of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre should beggar belief, but, of course, it doesn’t. ERCC is still run by the trans-identified male who believes women who want single-sex services are bigots.”

Downing, 24, was sentenced to six years in prison after he was convicted of ten charges including assault, sexual assault and domestic abuse.

He falsely accused a male partner of rape and then blackmailed him into carrying out sexual acts. He was also convicted of sexual assault against three women and another man.

[Downing, remember, is the SNP activist who tweeted how he wanted to “beat the f**k” out of feminists.]

Before his arrest, Downing said ERCC was the reason he was “able to keep going” and he “cannot put into words how much they’ve helped me”.

Helping men who sexually assault women? Fine. Women who've been raped? Not so much. What a farce. The Rape Enabling Centre.

The feminist campaign organisation For Women Scotland said Downing was able to use “the supposedly women-only service [at ERCC] because he claimed to be non-binary”. It added: “The much-vaunted claim that they were expert in detecting predators looking to exploit self-ID seems to be hollow.”

In a statement on Twitter/X, the group described ERCC as “a delinquent organisation”. It said Rape Crisis Scotland, the umbrella organisation for 17 similar centres across the country, and Sandy Brindley, its chief executive, along with “all those who facilitated Wadhwa” must be held accountable.

For Women Scotland added: “A proper independent investigation must now happen, and those who were complicit must resign NOW — including Brindley herself and Mridul Wadhwa. In no other org [organisation] would they be permitted to cling on in the face of such damning evidence.”

It's a text-book case of what happens when gender ideology takes over.