The Wadha story is not over
The Wadha story is not over
Mridul Wadha's reign reveals the ideological rot at Rape Crisis Scotland
A newly published and scathing report has condemned the failures of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre under its trans-identified male CEO, Mridul Wadhwa.
In May 2021 a trans-identified male, Mridul Wadhwa, was appointed the CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC). The post was advertised under Schedule 9 Part 1 of the Equality Act 2010 - allowing it to be lawfully restricted to female applicants - and the recruitment form clearly stated that the role was open only to women. But that didn’t stop Wadhwa from applying. And, despite his being ineligible, it did not stop the ERCC from giving him the job.
Over the last three years we have written much and frequently about ERCC and Mridul Wadhwa himself. Over time, we reported the following.
Wadhwa has no GRC and is legally male.
He concealed his sex to secure a job at Forth Valley Rape Crisis Centre.
He objected to an amendment allowing rape victims to choose the sex of the medical clinician who examines them.
He is ‘disappointed’ by the single-sex provisions allowed for in the Equality Act 2010 and finds them ‘discriminatory’ against ‘transwomen’.
He sided with serial litigant and period-obsessed paedophile, Jonathan Yaniv, against a group of migrant women.
He deems it appropriate to discuss whether rape victims experience orgasm.
On 2nd August 2021, only a few months after being appointed CEO of a sexual violence charity, Wadhwa appeared on The Guilty “Feminist” Podcast and made clear his contempt for women. (For Women Scotland compiled a transcript of the entire broadcast.) Denying that women who’ve suffered male violence need female-only spaces, he commented that “Sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well… 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… You have to reframe your trauma… To me, therapy is political”.
A few weeks later, Wadhwa took part in an online webinar during which he talked about ‘inclusion and intersectionality’ in sexual violence services. (Full transcript provided by For Women Scotland.) He spoke of ERCC now being ‘trans inclusive’ and having to “Wash and clean its history” of being female-only. He spoke of the women who may be self-excluding from ERCC’s services because of its trans [ie male] inclusive policy and described them as ‘transphobic’.
To nobody’s surprise, the Scottish Green Party supported Wadhwa in his appointment at ERCC and defended him vociferously when dissenters voiced their opposition.
On 13th August 2021, over a week after Wadhwa made his shocking comments on the Guilty Feminist podcast, the Scottish Green Party issued a statement, condemning those who dared to oppose Wadhwa’s role as the CEO of a rape crisis centre. Maggie Chapman, MSP for North East Scotland, said that misinformation was being spread “Based on ignorance, bigotry and hatred”. She added, “The Scottish Greens stand in solidarity with Rape Crisis Scotland, Edinburgh Rape Crisis, survivors of gender-based violence, Mridul Wadhwa, and trans people across Scotland”.
Chapman failed to mention that, at the time, she was listed at Companies House as the secretary of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre. She similarly failed to mention that, until 30th June 2021, she had been the ERCC’s chief operating officer and, therefore, Wadhwa had effectively been her boss.
It is also worth noting that, in 2021, three women’s sector services in North Lanarkshire were forced into closure after their funding was withdrawn. The council then awarded its new £1.4 million contract to an organisation called Sacro which is not a specialist in domestic violence nor local to the area. Council officers said this decision was “Informed by the findings of gaps in services with respect to specific groups including LGBT+” and that Sacro ‘will better help male victims’. At that time, a man called Arun Gopinath, Mridul Wadhwa’s partner, was a Sacro director.
In January 2024, Roz Adams, a former counsellor at ERCC, brought legal action against the charity after she was forced to leave due to her gender-critical views. Her (successful) constructive dismissal case was heard at the Edinburgh Employment Tribunal and proceedings were documented by Tribunal Tweets.
An ERCC ‘service-user’ (ie a woman who has suffered male sexual violence) had requested to know the sex of her support worker, explaining that, understandably, she would not feel comfortable speaking with a male. Roz, therefore, suggested putting the woman’s mind at rest by informing her that the staff member in question was indeed female but identified as non-binary. She was shocked to subsequently receive a letter informing her that she was being investigated for ‘gross misconduct’ and faced immediate dismissal without pay. She left ERCC following a nine-month disciplinary process throughout which she was accused of ‘transphobia’.
The evidence given by Roz Adams to the employment tribunal came as little surprise. She told the court that ‘gender identity is all that matters’ to Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and spoke of the centre’s recruitment policies which allow males to be employed in supposedly women-only roles.
Not only were males employed in roles intended to be filled solely by women but Mridul Wadhwa wanted the staff who objected to be fired.
Of course, it wasn’t just the staff affected by Wadhwa’s ‘trans (ie male) inclusive’ policy; the women who have been traumatised by male sexual violence and sought help there suffered tremendously as a result. Roz Adams told the tribunal of a heart-breaking example in which a woman in her 60s was turned away by ERCC because she needed a female-only therapy group. For asking if the space was women-only, the woman received an email telling her she was not suitable for ERCC’s service.
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 - describing its investigation against Roz as ‘reminiscent of the works of Franz Kafka’ - but it was also excoriating of Mridul Wadhwa, too.
The Tribunal described ‘a heresy hunt’ conducted by Wadhwa and other senior managers against Roz Adams and decided that Wadhwa had an agenda to ‘cleanse the organisation’ of staff not adhering to trans ideology. It found that he was the ‘invisible hand’ in the victimisation of Roz Adams and said that ERCC’s position was “At the very extreme end of gender identity theory”.
A few months ago we reported on convicted sex offender, Cameron Downing. Because of his so-called non-binary ‘gender identity’, Downing was allowed to use ERCC’s services. In a recording dating from January 2022, Downing - who falsely accused one of his own victims of rape - spoke about using the ERCC and how very much it had helped him. The ‘trans inclusive’ policy enforced so rigorously by Wadwha and his enablers allowed access to a rape crisis centre by a dangerous sexual predator.
Following the outcome of the Employment Tribunal, Rape Crisis Scotland, the body which oversees ERCC, commissioned an independent review of its services. The Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre National Standards Report was published this week.
Unsurprisingly, the report is highly critical of ERCC and describes its ‘many serious failings’ under Wadhwa’s tenure. It states that the centre ‘damaged’ victims of sexual violence by impeding their access to female counsellors, failed to put the needs of survivors first and seriously breached the standards expected of it. “Putting women in the position of having to discuss whether the service they receive will be provided by someone who was born and continues to identify as female has caused damage.”
The report is also scathing of Wadhwa himself. If found him to have breached the limits of his role’s authority and to have been ‘domineering’ as a CEO. It portrays him as incompetent, having ‘a chaotic approach’ in numerous key areas - including the safeguarding of staff and victims - and says that he “Failed to set professional standards of behaviour”. The report also suggests his staff were too scared to question his ‘trans activist’ approach and it condemns his controversial comments as having “Caused damage to individuals and to the reputation of the organisation”.
Wadhwa was placed on leave in June and finally resigned from his post last week following the publication of the report.
But questions still need to be asked. How did he get such a job in the first place? He’s not only a male, he’s a male with no GRC. And he’d already deceived employers to work in the women’s sector. In a 2019 interview with Fox Fisher, Wadhwa admitted that he concealed his true sex when he was recruited for a management post at Forth Valley Rape Crisis Centre.
His lying about his sex was subsequently the subject of discussion on social media.
(No one asked?? But there was a whole section on the application form.)
Despite his being male, despite his lying his way into a women’s sector job, despite his stealing opportunities intended for women, Wadhwa was still employed as the CEO of a rape crisis centre. And he remained in his post, defended and protected, even after his appalling comments about rape victims, even after the revelations about his connections to Sacro and even after the scathing judgement of the Employment Tribunal. How did he survive in this role for so long?
As a recent article by former MSP, Joan McAlpine, makes very clear, the problems at ERCC and Rape Crisis Scotland did not start and end with Mridul Wadhwa.
As Joan McAlpine writes “The leadership of Rape Crisis Scotland has been a cheerleader for the removal of women’s sex-based rights”. Indeed, it fully supported the Gender Recognition Reform Act but failed to support Johann Lamont’s amendment to the Forensic Services Bill which ensures that victims of sexual assault can decide on the sex (not gender) of the clinician who examines them.
When she was still an MSP, Joan McAlpine contacted Rape Crisis Scotland on behalf of several women who had all suffered male sexual violence and were extremely concerned about accessing genuinely female-only care. She organised a meeting with these women and Sandy Brindley, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland.
The meeting took place in the ERCC offices. Sandy Brindley and the ERCC representatives gave their full names and job titles. The women used first names only and shared their traumatic stories. One woman introduced herself simply as ‘Sharon’ and it was assumed that she, too, was a survivor of male sexual violence. However, Sharon became extremely vocal, insisting to attendees that it is illegal to stipulate one’s rape counsellor is biologically female. (This is untrue and contradicted by the Equality Act 2010.) It was subsequently revealed that this woman was Sharon Cowan, a professor of Feminist and Queer Legal Studies and a prominent trans activist.
“Bringing a third-party campaigner to a meeting of such vulnerable women without asking their permission, or even offering an introduction, was and remains astounding to me”, writes Joan McAlpine. “It shocked me then as it still does now, that given 100 per cent of rapes in Scotland are committed by men this appeared to not be an issue for the head of Rape Crisis Scotland… Rape Crisis say sex self-ID causes no problems. But what I can’t forget is that I was in the room when its CEO heard those women, saw their distress, and knew they were self-excluding from a service they needed.”
Greta is the mother of a girl who, aged 14, was gang-raped by four men in 2014. She attended the meeting at ERCC organised by Joan McAlpine. In October 2022, Greta and the other women present wrote of their experiences at that meeting in a report for the Scottish parliament.
“When the mother of a daughter gang-raped in 2014, who was also present at the meeting, explained how traumatising it was when her local rape crisis centre refused to guarantee her child a female counsellor, Ms Brindley did not acknowledge that this should never have happened. Our member was in tears at sharing her experience… Ms Burrell [Caroline Burrell, then CEO of ERCC] responded to this by elaborating on the pain suffered by men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment on being rejected by female survivors.
Sandy clarified that any male who claims a trans identity would be treated as a woman by the service, including those who present as male, have made no changes to names or pronouns and who would be unequivocally perceived as men by all. Sandy confirmed for instance that a male-born person could work on their phone counselling line, as long as that person identified as a woman… Sandy told us that if a woman asked for a female counsellor, she could theoretically be assigned to a male-born person identifying as female, and that they would not be told in advance of the status of this person.”
As detailed by Susan Dalgety on social media this week, a survivor of male sexual violence wrote of her experiences in the book, Women Won’t Wheesht. The author describes Sandy Brindley “Muttering under her breath and shaking her head” when the issue of Mridul Wadhwa was raised at a conference on male violence. Brindley insisted (to a survivor of MVAWG) that Wadhwa is a woman.
But then Brindley has always rushed to Wadhwa’s defence, castigating and even threatening other women who won’t pander to his delusions in the way she does.
Mridul Wadhwa may have gone but the people who employed him, enabled him and protected him throughout his catastrophic ERCC tenure remain in post. Unless serious changes are made to rid it of this pernicious ideology, Rape Crisis Scotland will continue to fail the traumatised women it was set up to serve.
(NOTE: We have deleted a paragraph about Wadha’s partner as we have been informed that it may have been pure coincidence he was on the SACRO board at that time.)
Please see the note at the end if you received this post via email. Small but important change
Fantastic piece of journalism, thanks JL.
One day the people propping all this up will get their comeuppance. 🤞In meantime women and children are being harmed and it’s time more people were angry.