Imagine being so distraught following a sexual assault that you take the plunge and approach a counsellor that specialises in rape? These women have been a lifeline for victims since feminists like me set them up back in the 1970s.
But a recent employment tribunal exposed how transgender activists were ruling the roost across Scotland, and running rape crisis centres, funded by public money, for their own twisted benefit. Distressed rape victims who expected to see female counsellors were told they were bigots and that the service was not for them.
The judge in this case described a “heresy hunt” against a woman who simply asked whether rape victims accessing the service could be told the sex of the counsellor assigned to them.
£1.9m of Scottish taxpayers’ money was handed to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) run by a man who spent nine months hounding a female employee for her legally protected beliefs – that biological sex exists, and that it matters.
The details of this case are distressing. Roz Adams, a woman described by those who know her as reasonable, measured and empathetic, was put through hell in a job she had been devoted to.
Adams started as a case worker at ERCC shortly before a new Chief Executive was appointed. Mridul Wadhwa, originally from India, had settled in Scotland in 2009, cut a striking figure in colourful saris and long, flowing hair. But Wadhwa is male, biologically and legally, having never formalised his transgender status by applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate, which is a legal recognition of having changed sex.
That the new CEO was a trans woman did not worry Adams in the beginning. But as the vast majority of sexual violence is perpetrated by men against women, she was aware that clients would not wish to see a male counsellor to talk about sexual assault. This is why rape crisis centres were set up in the first instance: so that women could ask for advice and support from another woman who would better understand her
But in May 2022, a client asked whether a ‘non-binary’ member of staff (referred to as ‘AB’ at the tribunal) who used a man’s name was male or female. Non-binary is an identity, made popular by transgender activists, which means ‘neither male nor female’.
Non-binary wazzocks
She explained to Adams that she “would feel very uncomfortable talking with a man”.
Up until this point, Adams and her colleagues had been told, on this question, to simply tell rape victims requesting female-only care that ERCC “does not employ men”. As far as Wadhwa and many others across Scottish centres, “trans women are women”.
So when the service user asked whether AB was male or female, Adams suggested telling her that AB is female at birth but now identifies as non-binary”.
That well-meaning suggestion brought down a “completely spurious and mishandled” disciplinary process on Adams, which ended in her constructive dismissal. Her offence? Daring to care about a rape victim’s feelings, and doing her best to answer her question without offending AB. But AB, supported by Wadhwa, decided that Adams had revealed personal information about AB to a client, and that she was transphobic.
Burn the witches!
The Tribunal found that the real reason for launching the investigation was as a pretext for “a heresy hunt”. The belief that sex is both real and relevant at rape crisis centre was deemed transphobic by ERCC. The Tribunal concluded that Wadha’s agenda was to “cleanse the organisation” of anyone disagreeing with a view “at the very extreme end of gender identity theory”.
Soon after his appointment, Wadhwa was asked on a podcast whether women should be entitled to access rape crisis centres that are free of men. He replied,
‘Sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well…But if you bring unacceptable beliefs that are discriminatory in nature, we will begin to work with you on your journey of recovery from trauma. But please also expect to be challenged on your prejudices.’
The fact that a rape crisis centre manager would deny access to a female-only service to traumatised women is shocking. Wadhwa and his acolytes did so for the simple reason that they considered anyone who did not accept the “trans women are women” doctrine to be hateful.
One woman in her 60s, who had kept quiet about her own abuse for 40 years, approached the centre wanting to meet with other survivors as part of her recovery. She asked for an assurance that the group would be women-only, only to be told that ERCC was ‘trans inclusive’. When she showed concern about this, she was told she was no longer welcome at ERCC. Staff did not even refer her to Beira’s Place – a sexual violence support service set up and funded by JK Rowling in order to provide female-only services for rape victims. In Wadhwa’s opinion, Beira’s was founded on “white imperialist feminism”, and staff were forbidden to tell clients of its existence.
Sturgeon, destroyer of women’s rights
Wadhwa had the ear of another trans rights activist, Nicola Sturgeon. In 2017 he stood as a nationalist candidate in the Edinburgh council elections, but not elected. In 2021, Wadhwa aimed to stand in Edinburgh Central or Stirling, backed by Sturgeon, on an all-women shortlist. Eventually, Wadhwa quit the SNP in protest at MSPs backing a law to allow rape victims to choose the sex of the doctor that would examine them.
Wadhwa had worked at Rape Crisis Scotland from 2014 to 2018, and afterwards became the manager of Forth Valley RCC for three years. Despite the fact that the job had been advertised for female applicants only, Wadhwa did not, by his own admission, disclose his sex when applying. Questioned about this on social media, he replied: “no one asked me, so I didn’t tell.” While in that post in 2019, he speculated in an interview about whether or not female rape victims experienced orgasm.
In 2021, Wadhwa was appointed CEO at ERCC, another job advertised as reserved for a woman.
Under his leadership, any woman who wrote to ERCC asking about women-only services was classed as a bigot, with her communications filed as ‘Hate mail’.
When asked, in 2003 during an event at Edinburgh University about ‘transgender inclusion’ at around the time that the dispute between Adams and senior management was coming to a head, Wadhwa was asked how best to get staff on board when it came to transgender rights. He bluntly responded: “Fire them”.
Some shocking facts emerged at the tribunal in January. For example, when Naomi Cunningham, the barrister acting for Adams, set out a scenario in which Wadhwa – who did regularly see rape victims from ethnic minorities in one-to-one counselling sessions – might traumatise a client. What if, asked Cunningham, a service user was a Muslim woman with imperfect English, might disclose details of the rape to Wadhwa, without having any idea that she was doing so to a male person. Would this not be traumatic for this woman, if she later discovered the facts?
Wadhwa declined to give evidence at the tribunal. However, Miren Sagues (an ERCC board member equally in thrall to transgender ideology) showed no sign, when cross-examined, that there was anything wrong with inflicting additional trauma upon a rape victim. To the tribunal, this seemed callous and cruel.
Sally* was one of the women who felt deeply uncomfortable at ERCC. “After I was raped in 2022,” she tells me, struggling to compose herself, “I could not speak about it to anyone, and didn’t even tell my husband. But a few months ago, I realised I had to deal with what had happened, because I kept having flashbacks and breaking down, so I called up the national rape crisis line and asked which was my nearest one.”
Expecting to be referred to a female counsellor, Sally was shocked when told that her nearest centre could not guarantee that. She then asked which service would. “They told me the service is open to and delivered by people of ‘all genders’. I never called back, and ended up in private therapy, which I could not afford,” she tells me, weeping.
On May 20th, the tribunal published its judgment, and it could not have been more damning of Wadhwa and his accolades at ERCC. Adams had been constructively dismissed, and had faced harassment and discrimination during a “deeply flawed” investigation in which the disgraced CEO was the “invisible hand”.
It remains to be seen whether Wadhwa will now resign. Surely the entire ERCC board, all of whom happily went along with running a rape crisis centre as though it were a trans rights pressure group, should go with him.
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