As the edifice of gender identity ideology continues to crumble, along comes another example of an institution not only captured but utterly distorted by this regressive and harmful theory. Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) has lost an employment tribunal case brought by a former staff member whose work life was made a living hell because she thought rape victims should be told whether the support worker assigned to them was male or female. Roz Adams was employed as a counselling support worker between 2021 and 2023, when she resigned after having been put through a gruelling disciplinary process over her belief in biological sex.
In a scathing judgment issued today, an employment tribunal unanimously found that Adams was unlawfully discriminated against because of her beliefs and unfairly subjected to constructive dismissal. The belief in question is that ‘biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity’. ERCC has been at the centre of controversy over gender ideology since early 2021, when it advertised for the women-only post of chief executive officer then hired Mridul Wadhwa, a male who identifies as a woman. Wadhwa did not have a gender recognition certificate and therefore was not only biologically but legally male. Wadhwa, the tribunal said, was one of the ‘leading actors’ in the Adams case.
There are more Roz Adamses out there
Adams’ evidence to the tribunal paints an alarming picture of an organisation driven round the bend by gender ideology. When Adams used the word ‘transwoman’ in an email, Wadhwa informed her that the term was ‘othering and oppressive’. Wadhwa’s appointment prompted a flurry of complaints from women, which Adams says were filed in a folder marked ‘hate mail’. She told the tribunal of a woman in her sixties who finally felt ready to talk about having been raped in her twenties. She approached ERCC and asked if the service was women-only, but was told it was trans-inclusive. When the woman said she was uncomfortable talking about her experience with men, she was informed that she was ‘not suitable for their service and was excluded from the service’, according to the judgment.
It was the case of another woman in a similar situation that brought Adams to grief with her colleagues and bosses. She raised the case of a female abuse survivor who wanted to know whether the support worker she would be meeting was male or female. Adams argued that there was good reason why a woman in that position would feel uncomfortable opening up to a man. She was told to tell this woman: ‘ERCC does not have any male volunteers/team members’. It was the ‘trans women are women’ doctrine taken to an obscenely literal conclusion.
The evidence led before the tribunal reads like a right-wing parody of intersectional feminism and every other fashionable progressive stance. One of Adams’ colleagues complained that she had said ‘something about being inclusive of everyone, open to hear all views and for everyone to have representation’. The monster!
Another snitched that she ‘seems to be closer to first wave white feminism, whereas ERCC is moving away from that and trying to rebuild our reputation with trans and non-binary communities’. Wadhwa sent staff an email about the opening of Beira’s Place, a women-only rape counselling service funded by JK Rowling which she described as ‘founded on a platform of exclusion, misinformation and what I would describe as white feminist imperialism’.
Adams eventually found herself put through a protracted and chaotic disciplinary process. It was chaired by someone who had never headed up a disciplinary hearing before. When asked, the chair was unable to recognise the landmark Forstater case by name. The internal process eventually determined that Adams had committed two counts of misconduct but opted to take no further action, likely because Adams started asking awkward questions about the procedural fairness of the process. In the end, she resigned after concluding she would no longer be able to work there.
Adams was onto something with her questions. The employment tribunal describes ERCC’s conduct in brutal terms, characterising it as ‘a completely spurious and mishandled disciplinary process’, ‘deeply flawed’ and ‘somewhat reminiscent of the work of Franz Kafka’. It was ‘clearly motivated by a strong belief amongst the senior management… that the claimant’s views were inherently hateful’. The process was, the tribunal says, ‘a heresy hunt’. Perhaps the most damaging finding is that, despite claims to the contrary, it was ‘clear that [Mridul Wadhwa] was involved in the process’. He had, in fact, chosen the people who led it. Adams’ resignation was therefore ‘caused by the respondent’s unlawful breach of contract’.
The question of an appropriate remedy will be dealt with at a later hearing, but Adams has already found a new position working for Beira’s Place, essentially doing the job she ought to have been doing at ERCC if only ERCC had let her. For its part, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, of which ERCC is a local branch, says: ‘We believe that it is important that survivors can make informed choices about the services they can access at rape crisis centres. We know it is important for some survivors to have a choice over the sex or gender of their worker.’ The centre has ordered an investigation into the Adams case. Given the damning nature of the judgment, it is difficult to see how Wadhwa can continue in post.
Gender identity ideology did not march through the institutions so much as sprint and in the rush to embed its extreme and anti-rational prescriptions, many an organisation has stored up trouble for the future. As the ideology begins to lose its footing, those organisations would be well-advised to get out of the gender identity business while it is still possible to save face. There are more Roz Adamses out there and this judgment will give them the confidence to stand up to this pernicious ideology in their workplaces and elsewhere.
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