Rachel Meade: The Process is the Punishment

Rachel Meade’s story is not unlike Allison Bailey’s, with gender Stasi in her workplace reporting her for thought crimes including the sharing of this Substack.

From the dedicated Mumsnet thread:

A social worker, Rachel Meade, is in the process of challenging Social Work England - their professional regulatory body - as she believes she may have discriminated against her due to gender critical beliefs.

This is because during the GRA consultation, she shared posts on her private FB page, from Fair Play For Women, Women’s Place UK & Standing for Women, among others. These were being secretly screenshot by an ex-colleague who then sent these to Social Work England, claiming that the posts were from groups who were discriminatory in nature, transphobic and who wanted to remove trans rights.

SWE decided that this was the case and sanctioned her, leading her employer to investigate her for gross misconduct. They placed a public Fitness to practice warning sanction on her record for a year. She has been suspended by her employer as a result of Social Work England's decision and will be facing a disciplinary process which she has been told may end in her dismissal.

She is taking both Social Work England and her employer to a tribunal; this is a really important case as if she wins, it will clarify in law that not only are employers bound to protect gender critical beliefs under EA2010, but Regulatory bodies are bound by it too.

This will mean that all regulatory bodies will have to recognise that the gender critical beliefs of their registrants/members are protected in law. This will cover social work, healthcare & law as well as any other areas covered by regulatory bodies so will have far reaching effects.

Her case against Social Work England is progressing and she has a Fitness to Practice hearing scheduled over the summer/autumn. This will decide if she is able to carry on practicing as a social worker.

Her entire career is in the balance.

She also has a disciplinary hearing with Westminster Council for gross misconduct. You may remember that I was named in the original complaint and then in the SWE outcome document. I contacted them and complained that they were libelling me. They immediately removed my name from the document but, ludicrously, continued the case against Rachel.

Rachel’s crowdfunder is here. Please don’t forget her, this is another important one.

Here’s the Times piece on her case.

Julie Bindel and Melanie Newman’s piece about it.