Roz Adam, the counsellor at the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre who was fired for having gender-critical views has received nearly PS69,000, nearly twice the amount expected.
Roz Adam won her case in Scotland against Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre in May 2024. A tribunal found that she was constructively dismissed due to her gender-critical beliefs.
The judge described the “heresy” hunt against her as a result of which she suffered discrimination and harassment.
The centre will also have to issue an apology publicly on its website, and direct sexual assault victims towards Ms Adams’s new workplace at Beira’s Place, a women’s refuge.
Adams, who was employed by the ERCC between 2021 and 2023, thought that the users should have the option to choose who to receive assistance from based on their gender, as sex can be binary.
She told the court that she spoke to her colleagues after a victim of rape asked if she wanted a male or female counsellor because she felt uncomfortable speaking to a woman.
Her managers said that it was against the policy of the centre to reveal the sex to a client, despite the fact that they knew that there were no men on the staff or volunteers.
Adams’ views were at odds with those of Mridul Wadhwa’s, the centre’s trans chief executive who has since left her position.
She was accused being transphobic for consulting with a nonbinary colleague about how to reassure a male client that he wasn’t a man. A tribunal later found that the internal investigation had been flawed.
Adams rejected ERCC’s apology in an earlier letter because it was “for the discrimination that you experienced while working at ERCC, and for the stressful experience you have gone through”. She did so due to the language and the fact the company didn’t name her. The tribunal found that the apology “was defective”.
The centre has already implemented the recommendations in a recent study.
Adams, at the time of the judgment described the victory as “a win for all those who have been victims of sexual violence and need to choose a worker or group on the basis sex to feel safe”, and added that “it validates three years of struggles”.
We have contacted the ERCC for a comment.
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