FiLiA Incident Review – Conference 2025: Statement from the Trustees

Following an incident at the Saturday night party of our 2025 conference, FiLiA’s trustees commissioned an independent review to understand what happened and how we can do better.
That review has now been completed.

We are grateful to the independent reviewer, Deb Cartwright, for her thorough, fair and compassionate approach. We accept her findings and recommendations in full.

The review found that FiLiA acted with integrity throughout, and that our conference was a positive experience for the great majority of the women who attended. It also found areas where we must improve, and we will.

Our priority has been, and remains, the women who were directly affected. We have been in contact with them personally. We will not discuss the specifics of the incident publicly, in keeping with our long-held principle of not speaking about individual women in public.

We are already acting on the review’s recommendations. These include developing a FiLiA Charter, strengthening our incident management process, building greater capacity across our organisation, clarifying decision-making authority across the conference team and strengthening our risk management approach, including by introducing individual safety planning for any woman who reports risk of harm at future events.

We have postponed the 2026 conference to give ourselves the time to embed these changes fully. We look forward to bringing women together again in 2027.

FiLiA’s commitment to women is unchanged. We are proud of what FiLiA stands for, and we thank you for your continued support. We are grateful to every woman who has stood with us, and we look forward to welcoming you back when our conference returns in 2027.

Sisterhood and Solidarity,

Jo, Kruti, Lisa-Marie, Ragani and Sally
FiLiA Trustees