The below is an open letter from a rape survivor, Paula, to Sandy Brindley, CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland. It is reproduced unedited, with Paula’s permission.
Dear Sandy,
I’m writing to implore you to stop doing press interviews.
Each time you do, it feels like yet another slap in the face from Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and Rape Crisis Scotland.
To be honest, I didn’t even know who you were until a few weeks ago. When the report into ERCC came out and Mridul Wadhwa resigned, I thought I could put this whole experience behind me.
Last week however, I heard on BBC that you “unreservedly apologise” for the failing at ERCC. It is honestly laughable. I have had no such apology. In fact, quite the opposite.
In July this year I received an email apologising for the GDPR breach that saw my email used in the Roz Adams tribunal. No mention of the entirely inappropriate email I’d received from MW in August 2021 that shamed me in into silence for two and half years until I saw it used in the tribunal in January 2023.
The solution was not tighter GDPR to prevent whistle blowing, the solution was not backing a CEO that consistently put their own agenda and needs above that of service users. When I pushed back that I didn’t want an apology for what happened after I wrote the email but rather for ever being in the position to write it in the first place, I was told, after a month silence, that I’d hear from Mairi Rosko. Only this week did I realise Mairi was a witness against Roz Adams.
Am I genuinely meant to believe I’m going to get a sincere apology from a witness that felt it was OK to file my email as “hate mail”? Having you suggest I’ve had any sort of apology is incredibly thoughtless and hurtful. To see you say “The thing I’ve found most distressing is what’s happened to survivors that spoke out online in defence of [Rape Crisis Scotland]” is another slap.
Those young women should never have been in that position in the first place, you chose to offer them up. What about the people like me that didn’t choose any of this, that aren’t activist, that were just needing to be heard and cared for, that have been harmed? I get it, you don’t care about us. but do you have to gloat about it in national press?
Then the interview in The Times this weekend. Saying your daughter was in tears that JK Rowling called for your resignation. The utter lack of self-awareness and responsibility.
My daughter has also been in tears a few times over the last three years and I’ve had many sleepless nights going over it in my head. When I went into a spiral in 2021, after being re-traumatised, she couldn’t understand, and she was too young for me to explain, why I was crying all the time.
Again, in January this year when I withdrew after seeing my email was quoted on Twitter. I had no one to talk to, no support because I’d couldn’t tell ANYONE what happened when Mridul Wadhwa said I was a bigot and likely a racist for being offended are their suggestion I “reframe my trauma” for flinching near men in the days after the podcast. I was too ashamed.
Once again, this May half-term, when I was blind-side after my email was printed in the tribunal judgement for the entire world to read, for trans-rights activist to refer to me as ‘a terf that listened to a podcast’.
So, while I have empathy for any child in tears, it does feel like yours could have been avoided if you’d simply taken some responsibility and said: “I made a big mistake at work” rather than blaming JK Rowling. My daughter’s, I guess, could be avoided if I stop listening to podcasts. That is all I did to lead to three years of emotional roller-coaster.
Yes, I’ve written emails that have further involved my in this absolute mess created by the insistence that men can be women, but the alternative is to shrink back in silence and let people more powerful than me do whatever they want, which is exactly what I did that night 18 years ago.
I’m not doing that again. I am saying to you now: “No, stop.”
I understand you’ve done some good work. I can almost understand that we’ve both been hurt by this. The difference is, it was your job to ensure I wasn’t, and you’ve failed at that. That is why people are asking you to leave.
Paula
