Mick Hartley

Euan McColm on the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre debacle:

It's very difficult not to feel that rape victims in Scotland’s capital city have been used as part of a grubby experiment.

When Mridul Wadhwa applied for the position of chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre in 2021, she should not have been invited to interview.

The post was expressly advertised as being for women only, yet Wadhwa, a biological male who identifies as a woman and who was not in possession of a gender recognition certificate, was not only interviewed, but was given the job, and then celebrated by the great and the good. Of course, a selfie with Nicola Sturgeon exists.

We now know – thanks to the findings of an employment tribunal last month – that Ms Wadhwa was involved in “a heresy hunt” against a former staff member who held the surely uncontroversial view that a woman who has suffered rape is entitled to know whether the support worker assigned to them is male or female.

Roz Adams was hounded out of her job by someone utterly unfit for leadership.

It has emerged this week that, quietly, Wadhwa has been placed on leave pending the outcome of an investigation into the circumstances of Ms Adams departure. Given the strength of condemnation from the tribunal last month, it seems unlikely that the chief executive will return to the organisation.

I’m certain those who hired Ms Wadhwa and those who cheered on this great “progressive” act would like the whole messy business to be forgotten. But it should not be. Indeed, the Wadhwa case stands as the perfect example of how extreme ideology infects and then destroys organisations. Not only must it not be forgotten but lessons must be learned from it….

The same government-funded activist groups that cheered on former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s unworkable plans to allow trans people to self-ID saw Ms Wadhwa’s appointment as a significant victory in an ideologically-driven campaign. Ms Wadhwa, I’m afraid, was not hired because this was the best outcome for those women using the services of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre but because the appointment symbolised “progress”.

It should not be remarkable to say that Ms Wadhwa should never have been appointed to the position she continues, for the time being, to hold.

But we know that accusations of transphobia – sometimes career-ending – are liable to follow any criticism of this “pioneering” figure.

The contemporary trans rights movement, with its violent slogans and its refusal to accept biological reality, has cowed many politicians into silence. Fearful of being accused of bigotry, too many say nothing even when faced with situations that – to most voters – are, at best, absurd and, at worst, downright dangerous.

Not only was Ms Wadhwa involved in an ideological campaign against a devoted and experienced support worker, but under their regime Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre appears to have offered support to a biologically male sexual predator with “hostility towards women”.

Last week, Cameron Downing, a former equalities officer with the SNP who identifies as ‘non-binary’ was given a nine-year prison sentence for a catalogue of sex attacks. A video later emerged in which he thanked ERCC for its help.

To the list of statements which should, surely, be uncontroversial might we add “dangerous male predators should not have access to support services for vulnerable women”?

It should be pointed out that ERCC’s service, according to the organisation’s website, is open to anyone who ‘self identifies as a woman, trans woman, trans man or non-binary person’.

It is a sign of how tight the activists’ grip is on government that no minister has felt the need to say much about the scandal at Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre….

Mridul Wadhwa should never have been put in charge of a service for vulnerable women.

Those responsible for the appointment would very much like us all to forget what they did. We must not do so.

Some incredibly vulnerable women have been failed by a service corrupted by a pernicious ideology. The employment of Mridul Wadhwa as chief executive of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre was an experiment that went badly wrong.

It's an extraordinary story – and it's not over yet.