We need an independent review into Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre - Susan Dalgety
Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre was set up 46 years ago, when a group of women got together to provide a safe and confidential space for women who had been sexually abused.
For the first nine years, the service relied on donations and fundraising, until Lothian Regional Council’s social work committee gave the centre its first grant.
Today, it receives nearly £1 million a year in funding from a range of bodies including the Scottish Government, NHS Lothian and the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board, which is responsible for the city’s health and social care partnership.
It is also, sadly, in the middle of a huge controversy following a ruling from an employment tribunal last week which found the centre’s chief executive oversaw a “heresy hunt” against a former employee, Roz Adams.
She was forced to quit her job at the centre following an internal investigation into her “transphobic” views.
Her ‘crime’? She had wanted to reassure a woman survivor that she would be seen by a female counsellor – that is a biological woman, not a man who identified as one.
According to the tribunal, the investigation ignored the normal concepts of natural justice and Ms Adams had been constructively dismissed.
The person described as the “invisible hand” behind the harassment of Ms Adams is none other than the centre’s chief executive, Mridul Wadhwa, who was born a male and remains legally a man to this day, despite identifying as a woman.
In normal circumstances, any chief executive who was the subject of such a damning report would be asked to leave their post.
But the centre’s board of directors has simply said they are “saddened” by the tribunal’s judgement and will take time to reflect on it.
Wadhwa, who has previously said that women who object to being counselled by trans-identified men are guilty of “bigotry”, remains in post.
According to the centre’s latest accounts, the chief executive’s post is funded by Edinburgh City Council. This is misleading.
The centre receives a grant of around £70,000 a year from the Edinburgh Joint Integration Board. A spokesperson for the Board says the grant, which has been in place since 2019, is to deliver support sessions to 360 survivors of sexual violence a year
The description of the grant is neither here nor there. What matters is the behaviour of the people who run the centre, and it is clear that both the current chief executive and its directors have failed in their duty of care to the centre’s staff and to some of our city’s most vulnerable women.
The Join Integration Board next meets on 17 June. At that meeting, if not before, the Board’s directors, who include several city councillors, surely have no option but to set up an immediate, independent review into the running of Edinburgh’s Rape Crisis Centre.
They owe it to the women who set up the centre in 1978 and to the thousands of women who have been helped by the service since, to help restore the centre to its core values and principles – the provision of safe, women-only services, run by women, for women.
Anything less would be a dereliction of their duty.