The Good News Supplement: Monday 4th November - Sunday 10th November

IMAGE CREDIT: @Serena_Partrick

A bumper edition of good news stories from the gender beat this week. Enjoy!

F**k Around, Find Out #1

Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre owes £70,00 and a public apology to Roz Adams, the counsellor it was found to have constructively dismissed, a court has ruled.

We have written much about Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) and its former CEO, trans-identified male, Mridul Wadhwa. In January 2024, Roz Adams, a former ERCC counsellor, brought a legal action against the charity after she was forced to leave her job due to her gender-critical views.

The Employment Tribunal found that ERCC discriminated against Roz Adams on the basis of her gender critical belief & constructively dismissed her. Its judgement was not only damning of the ERCC itself, but also excoriating of Mridul Wadhwa.

This week the court settled on the reparation the ERCC is to make:

• Pay Roz Adams £70,000 (twice the anticipated figure) in compensation.

• Make Roz Adams a public apology which must be published on its website.

• Acknowledge that Roz Adams “Was motivated by a wish to act in the best interests of service users when she questioned how to respond to the service user” and that nothing she did constituted bullying or harassment.

• Refer survivors of sexual violence to Beira’s Place.

The Dominoes Begin to Topple

And while we’re on the subject, another Scottish centre is distancing itself from Rape Crisis Scotland.

A couple of weeks ago, Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis withdrew its membership from scandal-ridden umbrella organisation, Rape Crisis Scotland. In a statement on its website, the organisation explained: “We were created to provide support by and for women. We believe, and women have consistently told us, that single-sex services delivered by an all-female workforce are crucial to help them heal from sexual trauma. This approach remains our priority but is at odds with RCS.”

This week, The Scottish Daily Mail reported that Lanarkshire Rape Crisis is also ‘reassessing’ its membership of RCS in light of recent events.

Sex Matters in the House

The Redoubtable Sex Matters had a ‘positive and constructive’ meeting with Anneliese Dodds, the Minister for Women and Equalities, this week.

Dodds assured them that the government “Will protect single-sex spaces for biological women”. Sounds promising…

Oh, Canada

In a splendid victory for free speech, a Canadian court has ruled that Carolyn Burjoski’s law suit against her former employer school board can proceed.

In January 2022 Ontario English teacher, Carolyn Burjoski, spoke at a meeting of the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB). She expressed her concern over the content of ‘diversity’ materials in elementary school libraries which promote transition as ‘cool’ and without consequence.

The chair of the board at the time, Scott Piatkowski, cut off Burjoski’s presentation and removed her from the meeting. She was subsequently assigned to home pending a formal investigation, banned from contacting her colleagues and students and accused of ‘transphobia’ and of violating the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Burjoski brought a defamation lawsuit against the school board and Scott Piatkowski which they tried to have thrown out of court. An Ontario judge originally dismissed an attempt by the board to use an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss the case but the board then appealed this decision.

This week the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed the Waterloo Region District School Board (WRDSB)’s case. Carolyn Burjoski is now free to pursue her defamation suit against the board and Scott Piatkowski at the Ontario Superior Court.

In making its decision, the court noted a discrepancy between Burjoski’s words and how they were subsequently characterized by Piatkowski. It also outlined that the WRDSB’s decision to remove the video of Burjoski’s presentation from its website, while Piatkowski still commented publicly about it, prevented members of the public from forming their own assessment.

Speaking to CTV News, Carolyn Burjoski commented, “I’m feeling awesome. Victorious. Jumping up and down. Did a little dancing”.

We wish her every success with her forthcoming lawsuit.

F**k Around, Find Out #2

The US Congress is investigating gender zealot clinician, Johanna Olson-Kennedy, and the NIH which funded her multi-million puberty blockers research.

A few weeks ago we reported on Johanna Olson-Kennedy, the Medical Director of The Centre for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, who has been medicalising gender-distressed children and teenagers for 16 years.

In 2015 Olson-Kennedy and her colleagues began a study into ‘The Impact of Early Medical Treatment in Transgender Youth’ and received a multi-million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Nine years after it first began, Olson-Kennedy has still not published the findings of the study, probably because it found no evidence to suggest that puberty blockers improve a child’s mental health.

This week, as reported by Benjamin Ryan, The Committee on Oversight and Accountability has begun an investigation in this highly dubious situation and is demanding sight of all of the documentation pertaining to the research from the start of the study. The NIH has until 18th November to comply.

Watch this space…

See You in Court

The health regulator is being sued over its decision to approve a private gender clinic which medicalises so-called ‘trans’ teenagers.

In January we reported that the Care Quality Commission (CQC), England’s health watchdog, had granted permission to The Gender Plus Hormone Clinic to prescribe cross-sex hormones for ‘transgender’ teenagers.

The clinic is part of Gender Plus, a private gender service which has bases in London, Birmingham and Dublin. It describes itself as providing ‘specialist gender assessment’ for ‘children, adolescents and young adults’ and boasts that “Our practice is guided by WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) Standards of Care”.

Gender Plus founder and consultant clinician is Dr Aidan ‘he/him’ Kelly about whom we’ve reported in the past. He worked at the Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) between 2016 and 2021 and is a member of WPATH.

The clinic’s CQC approval enabled it to prescribe cross-sex hormones to teenagers over the age of sixteen, apparently after as few as just six appointments, only one of which needs to be in person.

Why on earth, you may well ask, did the Care Quality Commission give its approval to this clinic? Perhaps the answer lies with one of its ‘equality partners’.

But the good news it that the Care Quality Commission is now the subject of legal action over its approval of Gender Plus. The High Court will review the CQC’s decision to register the private clinic in a case brought by Susan Evans, a psychotherapist and one of the first Tavistock whistle-blowers, and the mother of a gender distressed 15-year-old.

On Friday Mr Justice Foxton ruled that a judicial review can go ahead, noting that it should look at “Whether there was sufficient evidential basis for the decision and the rationality of the [CQC’s] decision”.

Paul Conrathe, Senior Consultant Solicitor at Sinclairslaw, told The Telegraph, “Despite well-known concerns about gender medical treatment for children with gender dysphoria, the CQC registered the first hormonal clinic run by ex-Tavistock clinicians. The High Court has ordered that a full trial should take place which could result in the clinic’s licence being revoked.”

Let’s hope so.

For more information about the case and to make a donation towards legal costs, please see this link.

Date For Your Diary

Women’s rights campaigners are organising a mass protest at Wembley after the FA censured a teenage girl who was concerned about playing against a male opponent.

This week we reported on the 17 year old girl who was expected to play against a bearded trans-identified male opponent during a ‘friendly’ football match. The girl, quite rightly, checked with the game’s referee and asked the male himself, “Are you a man?”. Instead of defending and protecting female players, the Football Association subjected the girl to a traumatic investigation and then handed her a six-match ban.

In the wake of this outrageous and misogynistic decision, women’s rights group, @twelve0fiveUK, are organising a protest at the England v Republic of Ireland match at Wembley this Sunday 17th November.

Join us at Wembley Stadium from 1.30pm onwards ahead of the 5pm kick-off. For more information, follow @twelve0fiveUK.

More Tea, Rector?

Edinburgh Academics For Academic Freedom is hosting an event featuring the University Rector, the incomparable Simon Fanshawe, on Friday 29th November.

“Simon will be in conversation with Dr Donna Murray from the University's Institute of Academic Development, and with undergraduate student of English Literature Freddy Lowe. We know the conversation will be fascinating and entertaining. There will be plenty of time for audience questions and interaction.”

For more information and to book tickets, please see this link.

Glinner of Hope

Don’t miss Our Graham being interviewed by GB News this week.

“I feel like I proved myself with the body of work I created in comedy. I don't need to do it again. This is by far the most important thing I ever did. Because this is about real people's lives. I'm 56 now and one thing I didn't realise until I started in this fight was that I wanted to make sure that I lived a life worth living.

If I had just sat on my arse and written comedies for the rest of my life, it would have been great. It would have been fun. But I think this is a hinge moment in history. And if I have any effect in altering it and stopping it, then I'll die a happy man.”

And don’t forget that Graham’s memoir, Tough Crowd, is still available from Amazon, The Express shop, Lightning Eye, Waterstones, Blackwells and all other discerning outlets. (There are also audio versions available on Audible and Spotify too.) It would make a fantastic Christmas present!

And Finally…