A criminal defence barrister who is suing her chambers and LGBT charity Stonewall for alleged victimisation has vowed ‘not to be deterred’ after her crowdfunding web page - which has raised over £60,000 - was suspended over the weekend.
Allison Bailey has lodged a claim at the employment tribunal against Garden Court Chambers and Stonewall, alleging she was victimised after helping set up the LGB Alliance, an organisation that criticises Stonewall’s approach to transgender rights.
Bailey alleges that the charity co-ordinated with Garden Court to put her under investigation in an attempt to ‘intimidate and silence’ her. She launched a crowdfunding campaign to pursue legal action, instructing Peter Daly of national firm Slater and Gordon and Aileen McColgan QC.
Crowd funding platform CrowdJustice unpublished Bailey’s webpage over the weekend after receiving complaints about its content. It has now reopened with a statement from CrowdJustice's chief executive, Julia Salasky, saying: ‘We messed up. We allowed Ms Bailey's CrowdJustice case page to launch before ensuring its content in its entirety met the high standards that our community expects of us. We realise that many of you are disappointed in CrowdJustice for the way we have dealt with this failing.
'As a recognition of this and help reassure our community that we are guided in this by morals and not money, we have disabled tipping – which is how CrowdJustice makes money – for Ms Bailey’s case and will refund tips already given.'
The case page has raised over £60,000 and is now closed to further donations.
A Stonewall spokesperson said: ‘We work with a diverse range of organisations through our diversity champions programme to give advice on tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic discrimination and how they can be more inclusive of LGBT people. While we aren’t able to comment on individual cases, we know it’s vital businesses take active steps in creating equality for all lesbian, gay, bi and trans people.’
