Stephanie has a post about standards and how we decide whom to believe and related subjects. In it she links to a document that reveals some important background information.
So here we have to weigh Sarah’s word against that of Cornwell, now the former RDFRS executive director. This would be harder for me if Cornwell didn’t have a history of using falsehood to deflect negative attention from Dawkins. She did this in the forum debacle a few years ago. (Yes, that email has been verified with someone who worked for RDFRS at the time. No, the source of the verification is not Timonen.) She did this by privately “clarifying” that Paula Kirby wasn’t part of Dawkins’ foundation when people were baffled that Kirby would write something like “The Sisterhood of the Oppressed”, though Cornwell’s email states that Dawkins insisted that Kirby be included in the foundation. [ETA: Kirby herself has also claimed the association.] Given Cornwell’s history, I don’t see any good reason to think that when someone otherwise trustworthy says something about Dawkins that Cornwell contradicts, I should trust Cornwell.
The link under “forum debacle” is, as Stephanie says, to an email. The email reveals some secret relationships, which explain some things about the atheist and secularist movements – secret relationships among people who ran major organizations and held positions on the boards of other major organizations. The email sheds light on a lot of things – things which should never have been secret – conflicts of interest, in short. Undeclared nepotism, in short. And, probably, why Dawkins took such a ferocious dislike to Rebecca Watson.