A “toxic” culture among Britain’s military police means sexual predators in the army are getting away with their crimes – because top brass are determined to protect the reputation. More than a dozen women have reported one staff sergeant in the Royal Military Police (RMP) for sexual abuse, but he was allowed to resign from the army instead of facing charges – meaning he also kept his gold-plated pension. That’s the claim of a whistleblower who served as a sergeant in the RMP for over a decade and says she was one of the man’s alleged victims.
Amy, not her real name, said the “toxic” culture, means sexual predators in the army are “getting away with stuff that they shouldn’t be getting away with”. She described how the man who assaulted her would go into women’s rooms and sit on their beds. He would also force her to go out driving with him at night and talk about sex, she claimed.
She said: “He preyed on the young, new females that were in the unit.
“One day, I was out with my friends in town and he was on patrol… There were two of us that went over to speak to him and I had quite a low-cut top on.
“So he hooked his finger around my top and pulled my boob out”.
She recalls as she tried to stop him, “he grabbed my hand and put it on his penis”.
She claims there are other men in the RMP who’ve been accused of sexual offences, recalling hearing of five separate allegations of rape against male colleagues by female colleagues.
“If all of this sexual assault and bullying and rapes are going on within the military police, how can they then go out and investigate the wider army for doing the same things?” she asked.
“It doesn’t work.”
Amy said that when she joined the RMP, she believed she would be part of a unit “representing how the rest of the soldiers should be conducting themselves”.
But she says the reality was that she had become part of “one of the most toxic” corps in the army.
She was left dismayed when told the staff sergeant she had reported for sexual assault would be allowed to resign.
“They basically told me he’s not going to be charged, but will be leaving the military… doing him a favour.
“He got away with it all. He’s not going to lose his pension and whatever else he would have lost with a dishonourable discharge.
“He’s left without a criminal record… that’s not safe for civilians as well, because it’s not even on his record,” she told Sky News.
Earlier this year, an inquest into the suicide of 19-year-old Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck found she had been failed by the army after reporting sexual assault and harassment.
Subsequently amid further claims there growing calls for investigations into sexual offences to be removed from the RMP and instead carried out by civilian police.
The Labour chair of the influential House of Commons Defence Committee Tan Dhesi said: “The system needs to change… incidents of sexual violence and sexual assault should be dealt with not by the Royal Military Police but by civilian police and civilian courts.
“I hope that the government will be making that substantial change in the very, very near future; in fact, they should do it ASAP.”
The change will see bullying, harassment, discrimination related service complaints dealt with by a team outside the commands of the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force.
However, Amy believes investigations need to be done “completely separately from the military”.
She added: “I think there’s such a male-dominated space in the military still. Women have no chance… and it’s not fair because people are getting away with stuff that they shouldn’t be getting away with and allowed to continue doing it and ruining lives.”
An MoD spokesperson insisted “unacceptable and criminal behaviour has absolutely no place in our Armed Forces”.
They added: “That is why this government is creating a new Tri-Service Complaints team to take the most serious complaints out of the chain of single service command for the first time, and has launched a new central taskforce on Violence Against Women and Girls to give this issue the attention it deserves.
“We are also establishing an independent Armed Forces Commissioner with the power to visit defence sites unannounced, and to investigate and report to parliament any welfare matters affecting service life.”
