Worse and worser.

Before I go on to the rest of the tweet I’ll say that my first thought was “Do you need clinical qualifications to run a rape trauma center? Isn’t it a managerial job rather than a clinical one?” It was many other people’s first thought too, and the answer is that you don’t need them if you are indeed just managing but he hasn’t been just managing, he’s been “counseling” too. For that you need qualifications. Why? Because you need training.

It’s all too easy to imagine what a shit job he does of “counseling” when he has no training and he hates women.

The rest:

He has only the following:

1. MSc in the Management of Training and Development from the University of Edinburgh, @EdinburghUni

2. BA English Literature from the University of Pune, @UnivOfPune

3. Diploma in Hotel Management and Catering Technology from MSIHMCT, Pune, India

He also does not have a GRC (for what it’s worth), yet was doing a job that was advertised as being open to women only. And, instead of just a management role, he carried out regular therapeutic interventions with women who had been raped. His words: “I do see survivors – four a week usually – who help me stay connected to the cause …it’s important to keep it fun”.

It’s important to what?!!

These questions need answering:

1. Why was a man with no clinical qualifications allowed to carry out direct work with vulnerable women?

2. Did the women seeing Wadhwa know he had no clinical qualifications; if not, has a crime been committed?

3. Did Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre employ him and allow him to carry out counselling whilst knowing he was not qualified to do so?

4. Did @MaggieChapman and those on the interview panel know Wadhwa would be carrying out clinical work when he was appointed?

5. Did they know he didn’t have a GRC and was still therefore legally a man?

Mridul Wadhwa’s total unsuitability for this role (besides the fact that he is a man), is shown by his saying, it’s “important to keep it fun”.

This NOT how trauma is treated. The therapeutic goal of trauma therapy is to help someone process the emotions, memories and, the re-experiencing of the event and to prevent this from continuing to adversely affect their daily lives.

Only someone with absolutely no idea about what they were doing would say it was about “keeping things fun”. Maybe that’s why Wadhwa allegedly asked women if they had orgasmed during their attacks? Maybe that was the “fun” bit for him.

By the very fact that Wadhwa was not clinically qualified in any way, he could have caused FURTHER INJURY to the women seen by him. Because:

1. They were being forced to participate in his lie that he is a woman. Remember these are rape victims.

2. He had no therapeutic training, so WHAT WAS HE DOING IN THE SESSIONS? Was he just asking random questions about their attacks and thereby reactivating their trauma?

3. Without training in how to de-intensify and reframe the reactivated emotions Wadhwa could have left these women ‘open’ and in a very dangerous emotional state.

We need urgent answers to these questions.

In the meantime, Wadhwa needs to be IMMEDIATELY removed from his job. Otherwise, he will be seeing another four more women this week. How many women’s lives has he damaged already? This is a national scandal. Please RX. This mustn’t be allowed to blow over.

It’s just grotesque.