The standards crisis in Rape Crisis

The board of Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) has decided that “the time is right for a change of leadership”. Mridul Wadhwa, the charismatic, sari-wearing transgender male who convinced it to appoint him “as a woman” into the top job, is out, and ERCC says it is dealing with problems that have been exposed.

Wadhwa left following an independent review of ERCC’s compliance with the Rape Crisis National Services Standards, which was triggered by evidence that came to public notice in the employment tribunal case brought against the ERCC by Roz Adams.

The tribunal judgement was damning. It said that ERCC had become gripped by “extreme gender identity belief” that conflicted with Adams’ clear biology-based view, and the concerns of service users who wanted a female-only environment. The tribunal recognised that dogmatic gender-ideology belief was prevalent in the organisation, and was demonstrated by all the ERCC’s witnesses and in written documents. Senior management saw Adams as “guilty of a heresy in that she did not fully subscribe to the gender ideology”. 

What the tribunal showed no sign of realising was that ERCC is not an outlier. 

A sector-wide problem

Since the tribunal judgment, Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS) has sought to distance itself from ERCC, which, according to the Independent Review by lawyer Vicky Ling, lacked focus on the RCNSS core standards; failed to put survivors first; failed to protect women-only spaces; had poor systems, procedures and document control; suffered from weak governance; and was led by a CEO who did not understand limits on the authority of the role and failed to set professional standards of behaviour.

The ERCC board said: “We recognise that we got things wrong. We are sorry. We are committed to putting things right and implementing the recommendations in the report.” Rape Crisis Scotland said: “As soon as we became aware of concerns about practice at ERCC, we acted on them. We will be working with ERCC to ensure the recommendations are implemented.” 

But the extreme gender-identity approach taken by ERCC is the very same one that has been promoted by the Scottish Government, RCS and mainstream civil-society organisations in Scotland, all of which applauded Wadhwa’s appointment. 

That Wadhwa was confident of this can be seen in an email to the Scottish government on 11th April 2023 dismissing the Adams case as having “roots in the hostile environment that is being created for charities that are openly trans inclusive”. 

Grassroots campaigners and survivors of sexual violence who have trying for years to get RCS to listen to their concerns were unsurprised by the review’s findings, but unconvinced by the organisation’s contrition. For Women Scotland says: 

“[RCS CEO] Sandy Brindley has been repeatedly warned by women in the Rape Crisis Network, by survivors, and by women’s rights organisations that self-ID policies were reckless and cruel.”

The Independent Review is inadequate

The Independent Review skirts around the main issue. The Rape Crisis National Service Standards (RCNSS) require that organisations commit to core standards, including:

The organisation has as its primary or major purpose to deliver services to women and girls who have experienced any form of sexual violence at any time in their lives.

The organisation is women led and is committed to remaining women led.

The organisation strives to maintain and develop services that meet the needs of survivors in their area who have experienced any form of sexual violence at any time in their lives.

The organisation works from a feminist perspective that recognises sexual violence as a crime of violence, an abuse of power, and as a cause and consequence of gender inequality.

The organisation provides and protects dedicated spaces and times for women and girls to access services.

But the standards don’t say what the word “woman” means. 

In the Independent Review, Ling swerves the question, saying:

“Sex and gender are issues on which many people sincerely hold beliefs which are deeply opposed to each other. It is not the role of this review to take a position on these issues.”

But without a clear definition of “women” in the standards, it is impossible to judge whether a service is meeting them. Was ERCC “women led”? Brindley and Wadhwa would say it was; people who do not hold gender-identity beliefs would not. 

A man who takes the place of a woman in an organisation that was set up to be “by women, for women” by definition destroys its very purpose and the basis on which it operates. A review that sets aside this fundamental fact can be nothing more than a box-ticking exercise. No matter how critical of that specific organisation, such a review will inevitably be co-opted into a gaslighting operation that tells abused women it is their job to be kind and inclusive to abusive men, and that their perceptions cannot be trusted and their boundaries must be set aside. 

Rape Crisis Scotland is in breach of its own standards

Sex Matters has conducted a review of the Rape Crisis National Service Standards and found that an organisation that does not clearly recognise the two sexes – as ERCC and RCS do not – will be unable to meet 51 of the 61 indicators.

Summary of failures

Standard: Core service by and for women
Failures: 6
Key reasons for failure:

• Failing to remain centred on women, failing to pursue its charitable objects.
• Being willing to appoint men who identify as women as board members or leaders.
• Failing to recognise the needs of survivors who want a female-only service.
• Failing to recognise that men who force or coerce their way into women’s spaces or ignore women’s consent are committing abuse. 
• Failing to provide “women-only” services.

Standard: Strong leadership
Failures: 15
Key reasons for failure:

• Having a strategic plan that cannot be aligned with supporting services that centre women. 
• Misinterpreting the law and thereby being led to breach professional and ethical frameworks, health and safety standards, and the Equality Act.
• Having trustees who do not understand their responsibilities in governing a charity for women.
• Discriminating against those who do not support gender-identity ideology.

Standard: Responsive to survivors
Failures: 11
Key reasons for failure:

• Failing to understand sexual violence, because of refusing to acknowledge  the material reality of and differences between the two sexes. 
• Failing to gather and make use of robust data on sex.
• Collapsing distinct groups of people into an inappropriate umbrella category of “LGBTQIA”.
• Potentially  referring a male user to a female-only service. 
• Presenting male staff and users as “female” and treating their sex as confidential, unable to obtain informed consent.

Standard: Safe practice
Failures: 11
Key reasons for failure:

• Failing to robustly risk-assess and safeguard adults and children because of ignoring and misrecording sex. 
• Dismissing risks and concerns raised by non-ideologically aligned people and organisations as transphobia. 
• Failing to have a culture of safe and reflective practice, since such a culture is impossible while ignoring and misrepresenting sex.
• Undermining professional boundaries by promoting a culture of open secrets, misrepresentation and coercion. 
• Setting policies concerning confidentiality of information about people’s sex that are inappropriate and unworkable, and that lead to inaccurate record-keeping and data analysis.

Standard: Lasting impact
Failures: 8
Key reasons for failure:

• Overlooking subgroups of minoritised female survivors, such as religious women, women with learning difficulties and disabled women, in favour of men who identify as women. 
• Making it impossible for service users to give feedback or complain in clear, natural language. 
• Treating disagreement with gender-identity ideology as “hostility” or hate. 
• Selecting staff and trustees only from those who adhere to gender-identity ideology or are at least willing not to challenge it. 
• Actively contributing to creating a hostile environment for women who seek to provide services that support female victims of male violence.

The other standard

The origins of the approach adopted by ERCC and RCS can be seen in Stronger Together: Guidance for women’s services on the inclusion of transgender women, which was produced by a consortium of LGBT and Violence Against Women and Girls organisations in Scotland. The guidance is breathtakingly oblivious to the needs of women and the risks posed by men. Its thinking underpins the LGBT Charter that many women’s organisations are signed up to. 

The lead organisation that produced it was LGBT Youth Scotland, a charity with a culture that had been shaped for years by CEO James Rennie, a child-abuser who led a paedophile ring. Rennie had groomed his best friend to allow him to babysit their three-month-old son in order to abuse him. 

The guidance undermines safeguarding at every turn.

It wrongly says that the Equality Act (2010) requires women-only services to be inclusive of “transgender women” (that is, men who identify as women). It says service users must be treated as male or female according to self-identification and that “it is not usually necessary to record any details of someone’s gender reassignment history or trans status”. If a man has been allowed into a women’s service and presented to traumatised women as a woman, information about this “must be treated as strictly confidential” and shared with as few people as possible. If women are uncomfortable or complain about the man’s inclusion, they should be educated in the same way as “if we received comments regarding other service user’s [sic] ethnicity, religious affiliation or sexual orientation.”

On the question of whether a “trans woman” is suitable to work in a women-only organisation, it says an unequivocal Yes. If “someone has a gender recognition certificate then they must be treated in exactly the same as any other woman who is applying for a post in a single-sex service”. 

None of this accurately reflects the Equality Act or a commitment to keep women safe. None of it reflects the principles underlying the National Service Standards, such as being trauma-informed, survivor-centred, and undertaking robust risk-assessment.

What now?

The Independent Review says: “ERCC must take advice from RCS concerning the definition of ‘woman’ within its service”. But RCS and other Scottish civil-society organisations funded by the Scottish Government speak with one voice on this, frequently stating that “trans women are women”. The Scottish Government makes it a requirement of funding that women’s-sector organisations submit statements on inclusion of “LGBTI women”. 

Rape Crisis England and Wales takes a more pluralist approach. It says that member organisations may choose to define women-only services as single-gender (provided to anyone who identifies as a woman or regards women’s services as being suitable for them) or as single-sex (provided to women on the basis of biological sex). It says that the National Service Standards requirements can be met on the basis of either biological sex or gender identity. 

Our review shows that this pragmatically vague approach passes the burden of risk on to the boards and senior leadership of individual member organisations. This was also documented in our research with women’s sector leaders.

Shonagh Dillon, CEO of Aurora New Dawn, says that Wadhwa “didn’t arrive in that job by default, he arrived by design”. She calls on Violence Against Women charities across the UK to define their women-only spaces in biological terms. 

The fallout from the Adams case, and the planned review and refresh of the Rape Crisis National Standards, offer an opportunity to ask whether women-led, women-only services are being protected adequately. It must not must not be left to survivors of male violence, individual employees and grassroots organisations to keep pointing out the harms done to the sector by gender-identity ideology, and to keep being smeared and attacked for doing so.