Why Rape Crisis Scotland chief Sandy Brindley's use of victims shows she's lost her moral compass

Lady Dorrian had made an order banning identification of the witness, and although he didn’t name them, his online articles pushed that beyond breaking point because their identities were key to his argument that the charges against the former First Minister were trumped up as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by Nicola Sturgeon. Mr Salmond was acquitted on all charges, but Mr Murray, a 65-year-old man with a heart condition, was sentenced to nine months imprisonment for contempt of court.

Bill to provide automatic anonymity

There is no automatic right to anonymity for witnesses in sex crime trials in Scotland, but there is a presumption against identifying them, as the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s Editors Code of Practice makes clear. “The press must not identify or publish material likely to lead to the identification of a victim of sexual assault unless there is adequate justification and they are legally free to do so,” says Clause 11.

Although as a blogger he was not signed up to the Code, Mr Murray would argue he did have adequate justification, were it not for the clear court order not to do so. It’s an admittedly confusing situation, with the public’s understanding of what is and isn’t permissible at variance with the law, something the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, which includes automatic lifetime anonymity for sex assault victims, aims to address.

It's against this backdrop that the recent actions of Rape Crisis Scotland’s chief executive Sandy Brindley must be set. No one must appreciate just how sensitively sex assault victims must be handled more than the head of a charity established to help them, or so you might think. Ms Brindley leads an organisation which allowed a trans woman without a gender recognition certificate, Mridul Wadhwa, to be appointed as chief executive of the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre (ERCC) in May 2021, despite the role being advertised for women only.

Ms Brindley claims she only became aware of problems caused by the imposition of gender ideology at the ERCC in October last year, by which time a worker was claiming constructive dismissal for victimisation after she raised concerns about the refusal to guarantee victims would only be counselled by a woman, if that was their wish.

Damning tribunal verdict

The growing problems within the ERCC, which also involves the former chief operating officer Maggie Chapman, now a Green MSP, with whom the worker, Roz Adams, originally raised her fears, led to a damning verdict at an employment tribunal earlier this year. That Ms Brindley says she knew nothing about it until late last year is itself evidence of a significant management failure, and so too is the admission that Rape Crisis Scotland claims to be unaware that ERCC failed to provide women-only spaces and services for 16 months, in contravention of national service standards.

Much has been said about Ms Brindley’s effusive support for her “amazing sister”, and then her apology following last week’s excoriating independent review of the Edinburgh centre under Mridul Wadhwa, which is worth repeating. There was, it said, “a strategy which did not put survivors first; a failure to protect women-only spaces; poor review of systems, procedures and document control; a period of weak governance; a CEO who did not understand the limits on her role’s authority, when to refer decisions to trustees and failed to set professional standards of behaviour; a lack of a business plan and organisational training and development plan to inform the objectives and support for people working in the organisation.”

Not surprisingly, the calls for Ms Brindley to follow Mridhul Wadhwa out the door have intensified, led by Scottish Conservative MSP Sue Webber at Holyrood last week, and it is Ms Brindley’s apparent response which has made her position even more untenable. According to the Sunday Mail ─ edited by the excellent Lorna Hughes ─ Ms Brindley offered the telephone numbers of victims who would speak positively for her, and in the next two hours unsolicited emails from six victims arrived, all saying they were aware of calls for her resignation.

Promotional activity

There is no suggestion the victims put up as part of an attempt to save her skin would have been identified, but it is quite extraordinary that people who have been through such a trauma might receive a call from someone running a counselling service to seek testimonials because they’re in hot water. It’s almost as if someone using Rape Crisis Scotland’s services has a box to tick asking if they are prepared to participate in promotional activity, perhaps after one which asks if they are happy to be counselled by a man.

Given the speed with which the emails arrived, it’s to be presumed the supportive messages were from people well-known to Ms Brindley and were therefore hardly the most objective, and there is no suggestion they were in any way coerced. But that’s not the point.

The very idea that the CEO of an organisation which exists to support sex assault victims could put them up for publicity to help her keep her job drives a coach and horses through the principle of giving survivors the space to recover which can last their lifetime. Even just offering up phone numbers compromises privacy.

Who would go to any of the centres over which Ms Brindley’s organisation presides, if at some point in the future they might be asked for their telephone numbers to contribute to a public relations exercise? Not surprisingly the Sunday Mail did not publish the testimonials.

Ms Brindley may yet cling on, but this sorry episode will become a case study of what happens when state-sponsored ideology takes precedence over common sense in delicate situations. All those who enthusiastically facilitated such failure need to do the decent thing.