A junior servicewoman said she was a victim of rape and forced to leave the armed forces while her abuser was protected, according to whistleblower testimony collected and published by a parliamentary committee on Thursday.
Her story is one of eight cases revealing continuing rape and sexual abuse in the military, collected by forces medical teams and sent to a Commons defence select committee, inquiring into women’s experience of serving in the armed forces.
Taken together, the personal accounts demonstrate the British military exhibits “a wider culture of institutional misogyny” despite repeated promises of reform, according to the committee’s chair, Sarah Atherton MP.
The servicewoman, “performing far above her junior level”, was raped on base by someone with whom she had been in a casual relationship. She was at first hesitant to report what had happened “for fear of recriminations”.
Nevertheless, after a while, she approached a military GP. who advised her to “choose her partners more carefully in future”. It took a second doctor to persuade her to report the incident to her chain of command.
That, however, led to no action being taken. Senior officers decided, in consultation with the second doctor, that it was necessary “for the career of the rapist and the elite unit he served in” to keep him in place.
As a result, the woman was “moved across country, out of that elite unit, against her will”, while she waited more than a year for mental health treatment. When that arrived she was medically discharged – told she had to leave the armed forces – “against her will”.
The woman’s case is the most serious of the eight compiled but the others include cases of sexual assault and abuse in the past two years, and repeated examples of senior officers dismissing complaints or failing to take them seriously.
A servicewoman said she had been “groped, forcibly kissed, and exposed by a male colleague” at a unit Christmas party. After a time she reported the incident to her superiors, but the chain of command “explained to her that it was Christmas, and a party” and “she should understand that things get a little out of hand”.
Another servicewoman in training was harassed by a man who entered her room on base while she was sleeping. Later he held her against a wall, claiming she had only joined the military to “get the leg over as much as possible”.
The woman reported the menacing incident to the senior trainer, only to be told that “her training would be cut short” while the allegations were investigated and then that her case was too weak. She completed her training but found herself suffering from “low mood, tearfulness, suicidal thoughts and self-harming behaviours”.
Atherton previously chaired a landmark inquiry into women in the armed forces, which concluded in 2021 that two-thirds of serving women had suffered bullying, sexual harassment and discrimination during their career, based on several thousand testimonies submitted to MPs on the defence select committee.
The latest testimonies were submitted following that inquiry and, Atherton concluded, they amounted to “damning evidence” showing that “serious problems persist”. Women make up 11.4% of the British military and since 2016 no role in the military is closed to women.
Atherton also said military police and prosecutors should no longer be able to deal with rape and serious sexual assault cases and that such matters should be handled by ordinary civil police. At present military rape cases can be heard in both civil and military courts, despite repeated complaints that conviction rates are far lower in the service justice system.
Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, said he believed that the situation for women in the armed forces was gradually getting better, but acknowledged that dealing with “cultural challenges” in the military “doesn’t happen overnight”. He added: “The key here is that we take complaints seriously, they’re dealt with without fear or favour, there isn’t undue influence, the chain of command is removed from it,” he said.
