- The Observer,
- Sunday June 8 2003
But Millington was to get little sleep that night. Over the next half an hour he was subjected to a frightening, humiliating ordeal, when one of his fellow squad members stripped to expose his genitals, sexually propositioned him, pushed him against a locker and finally squatted, stripped from the waist, above Millington's face.
The rest of his squad were present throughout, but no one intervened and the young recruit was left shaking and in tears, his former confidence in a career in the military utterly shaken. The harassment carried on for another month, culminating in a more serious assault. The incidents, which took place in June last year, were followed by a full army investigation and Millington's assailant was court-martialed.
The Ministry of Defence says that such incidents are very rare. But the news last weekend that a group of British soldiers may have humiliated Iraqi prisoners by forcing them into simulated sexual acts raised concerns that war had exposed a deep-seated culture of sexual harassment and violence in the Army in peacetime.
Eighteen-year-old Gary Bartlam, of the Royal Fusiliers, was arrested by military police last month after workers in a processing laboratory saw pictures of the alleged mistreatment of PoWs. One photograph apparently showed trouserless British soldiers with Iraqis who were captured during fighting in Basra kneeling in front of them. Senior MoD sources have told The Observer they are 'braced' for further allegations of torture.
An Observer investigation based on the analysis of records and transcripts of courts martial held over the last three years indicates that incidents such as those in Basra or Bassingbourne are far from isolated.
A quarter of all general courts martial so far this year have involved allegations of sexual offences. Last year the total was a fifth, itself a slightly higher proportion than in 2001. The offences include rape, indecent assault on both young children and adults, and a variety of bizarre and degrading sexually suggestive practices.
Page after page of court testimony reveals a barrack-room culture of homoerotic bullying, low-level sexual harassment of women, occasional serious assaults on both sexes, endemic use of and trading in illegal hardcore pornography and outbursts of violence, all of this exacerbated by a massive consumption of alcohol.
In one incident, similar to that involving both Millington and the Iraqi soldiers, a more senior soldier ordered colleagues to haul a recruit from his bed, tie him at the wrists and ankles, strip him and then drop their trousers and squat over his head. A knife was produced and a threat made to sever the recruit's genitals.
Cases heard by army judges over the past 18 months have included those of a young soldier who raped a young German girl in a car park, a sergeant who raped a female colleague at a base in Cyprus, a male sergeant instructor who seriously assaulted five young teenage male recruits while they slept, a corporal who took photographs of young soldiers in showers and offered others money for pictures of their genitals, a captain who indecently assaulted junior soldiers in a bar over a period of weeks, a military intelligence officer found guilty of distributing child pornography, and a drunken corporal who forced his penis into a junior female recruit's mouth.
Relatives of victims accuse the Army of failing to tackle the problem. The father of one young woman, who was harassed while undergoing basic training at the age of 18, told The Observer that senior officers and officials 'didn't want to hear' when his daughter tried to report the problem. 'We could see they wanted it swept under the carpet,' he said. 'We were made to feel bad for bringing it up.' His daughter has now left the Army, he said.
Pressure from families has forced the army to re-open investigations into claims of endemic violence, bullying and sexual harassment at Deepcut Barracks in Surrey, where four young soldiers died between 1995 and March 2002.
Legal experts point to difficulties in investigating allegations of improper sexual behaviour and insist the Army does punish severely those found guilty.
'You have very significant sentences being handed out now for offences that once would have been ignored. The Army is getting a lot better, though there is still a lot of work to do,' according to one former military prosecutor. He said 'initiation rites' involving the humiliation of new recruits had largely been eradicated.
However, it is widely accepted that only a fraction of incidents are reported. A recent review of recruit training spoke of a 'code of silence' and a 'widespread reluctance' to report bullying, and stressed the difficulty faced by recruits and trainees in bypassing non-commissioned officers to reach the senior chain of command. The review, led by military officers, concluded that, although a 'perceptible amount of low-level bullying', affecting 7 per cent of recruits, occurs in training, 'no organised culture of bullying' exists and that the situation has improved in recent years.
The review also examined gender relations. Although a 'no touching' rule exists, it found that a 'discernible level of consensual sex' occurred in mixed training bases.
Alcohol plays a prominent role in almost all cases reaching courts martial and contributed to many violent offences. Dozens of soldiers have been imprisoned in the past year for assaults, some of which involved knives, iron bars and wooden sticks. 'There is a culture of very heavy drinking in the services,' said Gilbert Blades, a lawyer who deals with many military cases.
An MoD spokesman stressed that the courts martial 'represented a very, very small proportion of the Army' - which totals around 106,000 people.
'However, the Army's policy towards all forms of improper behaviour is zero tolerance, and it incorporates procedures and undertakes training at all levels in an attempt to raise awareness of these issues, minimise and, if possible, eradicate such practices,' the spokesman said.
The most recent statistics available for disciplinary convictions in Britain's three armed services date from 1999 and reveal that 43 servicemen were convicted in a military or civilian court for a sexual offence in that year.
MPs called last week for an inquiry if there were indications of a 'systemic problem'. 'If there is a pernicious element within the armed forces, then we should be made aware of it,' said Paul Keetch, Liberal Democrat defence spokesman.
The problems are far worse in other nation's militaries, research suggests. A recent survey revealed that one in 10 women cadets at West Point, the premier US military academy, had been raped or had suffered sexual assault.
• Some names have been changed.
