A controversial rape crisis centre “damaged” victims of sexual violence by hindering their access to biologically female counsellors, a damning report has found.
Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC), run by trans woman Mridul Wadhwa, was blasted for “many serious failings” including not putting the needs of survivors first.
The independent investigation condemned the centre for insisting traumatised rape victims, who can be as young as 12, must specify if they don’t want support from someone born a man.
More than 94 per cent of victims of rape are women and the perpetrators men.
Yet the review found ERCC failed to provided vulnerable victims with safe women only spaces, while at the same time opening up services to men.
Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre chief executive Mridul Wadhwa, a trans woman, is accused of going beyond her own authority and failing to ‘set professional standards of behaviour’
The report said: “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 review was ordered by umbrella organisation Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS) in May 2024, after a scathing employment tribunal judgment ruled that ERCC worker Roz Adams was subjected to a “heresy hunt” for suggesting a rape victim should know the sex of her counsellor.
Although rape crisis centres are autonomous, they sign up to the RCS’s national standards, many of which the review found ERCC had failed to meet.
RCS said the review had found a “significant breach of its standards” and was “pausing” the referral of any new clients to ERCC until it implements the recommendations of the review.
Women only spaces are a required national standard yet they were not available from October 2022 until at least February 2024, when ERCC knew it was facing a tribunal and would be under scrutiny.
The review was heavily critical of Wadhwa, who self identifies as a woman but does not have a gender recognition certificate and is biologically male.
It found her be a domineering as chief executive who “who did not understand the limits on her role’s authority” and it said Wadhwa “failed to set professional standards of behaviour” within the organisation.
She was portrayed as incompetent, overseeing an organisation with systemic failures and a chaotic approach in key areas such as financial transparency, training and safeguarding for staff and clients.
Wadhwa was placed on leave from June this year, a month after she was blamed by the employment tribunal for being the “invisible hand” in the victimisation of Ms Adams for her gender critical views.
The reviewer, charity sector consultant, Vicky Ling, said she was also told victims were not using the service because they deemed it unsafe, given there was no guarantee of being seen by a counsellor born female.
Roz Adams, an ERCC worker under Wadhwa, sparked the independent investigation into the centre after an employment tribunal found she had been subjected to a ‘heresy hunt’ for suggesting rape victims should know the sex of their counsellor
And she recommended ERCC refer any concerned survivors to guaranteed women only services such as Beiras Place, the rape help centre funded by JK Rowling and condemned by Wadhwa as transphobic.
Wadhwa labelled rape victims bigots and transphobes if they doubted whether a man identifying as a woman should run a centre helping women recover from male violence.
She said any staff who did not think all trans women were women should be fired.
According to the employment tribunal, Madhwa was on a mission to cleanse the organisation of those who did not follow her beliefs’.
In 2021, Wadhwa caused outrage when she told listeners of the Guilty Feminist podcast that some rape victims were “bigoted people” who needed to “reframe their trauma” and be re-educated if they didn’t agree all trans women were female.
The report said Wadhwa’s controversial comments “caused damage to individuals and to the reputation of the organisation”.
The report said the work environment at ERCC was unhealthy and with high sickness rates and that staff were likely to be too scared to question Wadhwa’s “trans activist” approach.
It recommended an overhaul of the culture at ERCC including the establishment of policies which would guarantee there would be no victimisation of any staff who did not agree with trans-inclusion within the service.