Army under spotlight for abuse allegations
'Ten of the 290 young women aged sixteen or seventeen who have joined the army in the last year, have already made formal reports of rape or sexual assault.'
Quakers are among campaigners who have called again for the army to lose the power to police itself after more allegations. Several sexual abuse claims in the army have recently made headlines, including an alleged cover-up over the murder of twenty-one-year-old Kenyan woman Agnes Wanjiru in 2012, and twenty-one-year-old Olivia Perks, who took her own life at Sandhurst in 2019, allegedly after being sexually exploited.
Senior generals were summoned to a rare special meeting of the army’s management board last month. According to official figures published on 18 October, ten of the 290 young women aged sixteen or seventeen who have joined the army in the last year, have already made formal reports of rape or sexual assault. Nearly two-thirds of the 4,000 women who gave evidence to a House of Commons Defence Select Committee inquiry earlier this year had experienced abuse, bullying or harassment in the armed forces.
Quaker Anya Nanning Ramamurthy, from the Peace Pledge Union, said: ‘The army is no safe space for women and no amount of reform can change this. Abuse, bullying, discrimination and harassment are systemically ingrained in the military-industrial complex.’
Questions have also been asked about the treatment of teenage soldiers at the Army Foundation College (AFC) in Harrogate rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted.The parents of three teenagers have called for it to be shut down, cataloguing a list of alleged abuse. AFC staff were accused in fifty cases of assaulting or mistreating teenage recruits between 2014 and 2017. The Guardian revealed there were sixty complaints of violent behaviour by staff at AFC between 2014 and 2020.
The allegations have reignited calls for the British army to end recruitment of under-eighteens. Peers are currently seeking to amend a bill making its way through parliament to raise the recruitment age to eighteen. The UK is the only country in Europe which routinely recruits people under that age.
An army spokesperson said: ‘We have a very strong duty of care and safeguarding mechanisms at AFC Harrogate to ensure junior soldiers have the right support structure and welfare provision, including confidential support lines. AFC Harrogate, alongside all phase 1 and phase 2 training organisations, are subject to Ofsted inspection on a routine basis.’
The UK government recently rejected calls to move rape cases into civilian courts.
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