How transgender debate has shattered Scotland's rape crisis centre network

It is 50 years since Scotland’s first rape crisis centre was established in Glasgow, only the second in the UK. With just one landline, a notebook and a pencil, a group of women volunteers, fired up by second-wave feminist writers and fed up of male oppression and violence, started a movement that today has centres from Orkney to Dumfries and Galloway, as well as a national body, Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS).

Thousands of women have benefited from their services. Women supporting other women following the most awful of crimes. Listening. Offering hope. Practical support. Helping rebuild shattered lives. The vital role of rape crisis centres in the fabric of our society cannot be underestimated.

Yet this week, Scotland’s rape crisis network suffered its own crisis. Four centres, including the mothership now known as Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis, set up a new network – the Scottish Rape Crisis Alliance – promising “to disrupt the status quo and to work towards a world where no woman or girl – anywhere – feels the threat of male violence”.

A laudable aim, but why, as sexual violence against women and girls continues to rise, has the Glasgow centre – along with Lanarkshire Rape Crisis Centre, the Star Centre –Rape Crisis Ayrshire, and the Western Isles Rape Crisis Centre – chosen to break away from their sister organisations?

READ MORE: Shocking rise in sexual crimes shows how Scotland treats women as less than human

Thousands of women have benefited from the work of rape crisis centres in Scotland, but the network has been plunged into a crisis of its own by the transgender debate (Picture, posed by model: Dominic Lipinski) | PA

A multi-million-pound funding crisis

Make no mistake, this is not a minor tiff among volunteers. The four centres represent more than 40 per cent of the Scottish population. Last year, the Glasgow centre alone reported a 42 per cent increase in survivors asking for help – with almost 40,000 cases where contact was made.

There is a funding crisis in the sector. Despite the Scottish Government’s very public commitment to tackling violence against women and girls, grants to organisations such as the country’s network of rape crisis centres have remained at a standstill for five years, a decision that has effectively cut support for this vital work by millions of pounds.

With resources stretched to breaking point, Glasgow has been forced to close two of its waiting lists and other centres are facing similar dilemmas. The current allocation of resources simply does not meet the demand from women for help following sexual assault.

READ MORE: Rape Crisis Scotland head Sandy Brindley steps down after 24 years

Demands for trans-inclusive action plans

But it is not funding alone that has caused the fracture in the movement. It is something much more fundamental. Sex. The very basis of why the centres were set up in the first place. In recent years, Scotland’s rape crisis movement has been torn apart by gender identity, the disputed ideology that insists that a human being can change his or her sex simply by asserting that they are now male or female.

More than a decade ago, the Scottish Government demanded that rape crisis centres include trans-inclusive action plans in funding applications, with the full support of Rape Crisis Scotland and its then chief executive, Sandy Brindley.

Local rape crisis centre staff who questioned the new approach were viewed as ‘recalcitrant’ and as one key figure recalls, “we were berated and questioned on whether we demanded women’s birth certificates, or even more ludicrously, whether we did ‘genital inspections’".

The “big four” government-funded women’s organisations – RCS, Scottish Women’s Aid, Engender and Zero Tolerance – then published a joint statement welcoming the inclusion of trans-identified men in women-only services. Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre employed Mridul Wadhwa, who was born male but identifies as a trans woman, to run its service.

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Importance of an all-female workforce

Women, including rape survivors, who challenged this fundamental change in women’s support services were dismissed as “bigots” or worse. In 2024, the Glasgow centre took the difficult decision to break away from Rape Crisis Scotland, saying that women had consistently told them that single-sex services delivered by an all-female workforce were crucial to help them heal from sexual trauma, adding, “this approach remains our priority but is at odds with RCS”.

And this week, Glasgow was joined by three other centres in a courageous effort to reinvigorate Scotland’s rape crisis support services. As Claudia Macdonald-Bruce, director of Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis, said: “We must be honest with ourselves, and especially with survivors. What we are doing as a country is not working.”

Meanwhile, the poster girl for the government’s ‘inclusive’ approach to women’s support services, Sandy Brindley, has just resigned from her role as chief executive of RCS, finding a safe haven in academia.

After 24 years working for the charity, her legacy is hardly one to boast about. Scotland’s rape crisis network is split apart. Funding has effectively been cut, with demand far outstripping resources.

60 per cent rise in rape and attempted rape

All against the backdrop of a significant long-term increase in recorded rape and attempted rape, with reports rising by 60 per cent over the last decade. The new alliance was right when it pointed out earlier this week that Scotland is facing a public health crisis that “devastates bodies, shatters families and communities, and scars generations”.

Whatever shape the new Scottish Government takes after May 7, it will have to get to grips very quickly with the crisis in women’s support services. As Rosemary Whyte, who co-founded the Glasgow rape crisis centre 50 years ago, said last month when Sandy Brindley resigned: “Times may have changed since we founded the first centre but the fundamental nature of rape and its long-term consequences for the survivors has not.”

And just as the fundamental nature of rape has not changed, neither has the need for properly funded support services for survivors, and for those services to be based on the immutable principle of single-sex provision.

When Rosemary Whyte and her generation of women set up rape crisis centres and domestic abuse refuges, they did so because they recognised that violence against women is a political issue. It remains so. As a country, we owe it to them, and future generations, to protect their legacy.