‘Toxic’ army unit charged with investigating sex crimes allowing abusers to ‘get away with it’ in own ranks, whistleblower says

Published

1 month ago

May 16, 2025

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More than a dozen women came forward to report a staff sergeant in the Royal Military Police (RMP) for sexual abuse, but he was allowed to resign from the army instead of face charges.

Warning: This article contains material some readers may find distressing

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 victims.

Amy, not her real name, says a “toxic” culture in the military police means sexual predators in the army are “getting away with stuff that they shouldn’t be getting away with”.

It’s a rare insight into life inside the Royal Military Police, the corps charged with investigating crime in the army.

Amy described how the man who assaulted her would go into women’s rooms and sit on their beds. She says he used to force her to go out driving with him at night and talk about sex.

“He preyed on the young, new females that were in the unit,” she says.

“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 says.

“It doesn’t work.”

‘He got away with it’

Looking back on her career in the army is difficult for Amy.

After leaving, she tried to settle back into life as a civilian with a new job and a young family to look after, but says she worried about bumping into former colleagues in the street.

“It’s taken me a long time to heal,” she says.

“I was very bitter towards my military career when I left, but I’ve had to sort of learn, build myself up again and remember the good times because they were really good times as well… I think it was just so bad at points.”

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”.

The reality, she says, was that she had become part of “one of the most toxic” corps in the army.

She recalls being told that 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,” she says.

“He got away with it all,” she adds. “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.”

‘They investigate themselves’

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.

Since then, Sky News has reported claims of widespread abuse and 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 is now urging the government to act.

Tan Dhesi told Sky News: “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.”

Since Gunner Beck’s death, a new tri-service complaints team has been announced by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

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”.

“Otherwise it doesn’t work because friends will be investigating friends,” she says.

“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.”

She believes the entire system lacks accountability. “They investigate themselves,” she says, even down to how the RMP is regulated.

“The people that run that unit are RMP. They get posted in, do a few years and then get posted back out.”

‘I was told off for reporting it’

Katie, also not her real name, served in the army for over 20 years. She saw active service in Afghanistan and rose to the rank of Captain.

It was a distinguished career that was brought to a premature end by sexual abuse and whistleblowing.

Having taken the difficult decision to leave the army she now leads a secluded life and suffers poor mental health.

“I still struggle,” she says. “I’m still very wary of men. My relationship is strained.

“Everything seems like black and white now, like I live my life in black and white rather than full colour… As a person, it has changed my life forever.”

To begin with, she was in the same unit that Gunner Beck would join years later. She too experienced harassment and abuse, and says her line manager “laughed” when she reported it.

“I just felt like dehumanised, I felt like property, I didn’t feel like a person anymore,” she says.

“And so I would avoid people… I would hide in the garages, behind the tanks, in between the guns, just praying that these people hadn’t seen me and I might be able to escape them for that day.”

She moved to a different unit but says wherever she went, abuse was rife. After being groped by a higher-ranking colleague, she assumed her chain of command would escalate her report to the RMP.

Instead, she says she was “put in front of the Sergeant Major and told off”.

“I remember at the time saying I’d like to call the civilian police, and I was told that I wasn’t allowed to do that and I’d be disciplined if I tried to do that,” she said. “So I was so frightened.”

She stayed in the army, hoping to make a difference. As an officer, she began reporting abusers on behalf of younger victims.

“I kept this goal in my head of reaching a position one day where I could help other women,” she said. “When I got there, I realised that it was way more toxic than I could have ever imagined.

“The officer corps were actually the worst perpetrators of all because they brushed it under the carpet. There was a will and a need more to protect themselves or their friends. Or the reputation of the unit first and foremost.”

She believes changes made by the MoD since the death of Gunner Beck to remove the chain of command from sexual abuse investigations will make “little difference”, saying they’ll still be carried out by “the same people, but just under a new title”.

‘They should be held accountable’

An MoD spokesperson told Sky News that “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.”

Amy believes the RMP is not fit for purpose.

“They have higher standards to uphold, yet they don’t uphold them within their own regiment, within their own lives, and then they’re expected to police and uphold those standards throughout the rest of the army,” she says.

“At the end of the day, they know the law and they should be held accountable for what they do.”

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK

UK

PM warns of ‘era of radical uncertainty’ – and says UK will increase defence spending

Published

2 hours ago

June 24, 2025

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PM warns of 'era of radical uncertainty' - and says UK will increase defence spending

Sir Keir Starmer said the UK is set to increase spending on defence, security and resilience to 5% of GDP by 2035 to meet an “era of radical uncertainty” – but without promising any additional cash.

The move – part of a new spending pledge by the NATO alliance – was panned as deceptive “smoke and mirrors” by critics, who pointed to the very real risk of escalating conflict between Iran, the US and Israel, as well as Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Sky News the timeline for the increase was “very slow” and warned Russia could attack a NATO country within five years.

“In my view, this is slow because we believe that starting from 2030, Putin can have significantly greater capabilities,” he told chief presenter Mark Austin.

The prime minister, Donald Trump and the other leaders of NATO’s 32 member states are expected to approve the investment goal when they meet at a summit in The Hague, which opens later today.

It replaces a previous target to spend 2% of GDP purely on defence.

The announcement will be celebrated as a win for the US president, who has been demanding his allies spend more on their own defences instead of relying on American firepower.

Overnight, he claimed to have secured another success, declaring that Iran and Israel have agreed to a ceasefire – just hours after Iran launched missiles against two American military bases in retaliation to a US decision to attack three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend.

Perhaps it will mean he will switch attention back to achieving a goal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, which will be another key focus of the gathering in the Dutch capital.

NATO planners have crunched the summit down to a short main session tomorrow, with a final communique much briefer than usual – all steps designed to reduce the chance of the US president leaving early.

He is already scheduled to arrive late and last this evening, provided he turns up.

There is huge nervousness about Mr Trump’s commitment to an alliance that has been the bedrock of European security since it was founded more than 75 years ago.

He is not a fan though, and has previously accused Europe and Canada of an overreliance on American firepower for their own security, calling for them to do more to defend themselves.

This pressure has arguably been a bigger motivator in prompting certain allies to agree to spend more on their militaries than the threat they say is posed by Russia, Iran, China and North Korea.

Spain’s position could create friction this week. The Spanish prime minister, while agreeing to the new investment goal, has said his country is not obliged to meet it.

The UK was also slow to say yes – a stance that was at odds with a defence review endorsed by Sir Keir that was centred around a “NATO-first” policy.

As well as agreeing to the defence and security investment goal, the British government is also publishing a new national security strategy on Tuesday that will highlight the importance of a wider definition of what constitutes security, including energy, food and borders.

There will also be a focus on a whole-of-society approach to resilience in an echo of the UK’s Cold War past.

It described the commitment to invest in defence, security and national resilience as an aligning of “national security objectives and plans for economic growth in a way not seen since 1945”.

Sir Keir said: “We must navigate this era of radical uncertainty with agility, speed and a clear-eyed sense of the national interest to deliver security for working people and keep them safe.

“That’s why I have made the commitment to spend 5% of GDP on national security. This is an opportunity to deepen our commitment to NATO and drive greater investment in the nation’s wider security and resilience.”

The funding will be split, with 3.5% of GDP going on core defence and 1.5% on homeland security and national resilience – a new and so far less clearly defined criteria.

Progress on investment will be reviewed in 2029.

The defence goal is higher than the government’s current ambition to lift defence expenditure to 3% of GDP by 2034, from 2.3% currently.

The only solid commitment is to spend 2.6% on defence by 2027 – a figure that has been boosted by the addition of the whole of the budget for the intelligence agencies.

This level of intelligence spending had not previously been included and has drawn criticism from defence experts because it is not the same as tanks, artillery and troops.

The government, in its statement, is now focusing on an even higher-sounding number, claiming that it will hit 4.1% of the new NATO target by 2027.

However, this is merely based on adding the new 1.5% spending goal for “resilience and security” to the already stated 2.6% defence spending pledge.

A Downing Street spokesperson was unable immediately to say how much of GDP is currently spent on whatever is included in the new resilience category.

It could include pre-announced investment in civil nuclear energy as well as infrastructure projects such as roads and railways.

For the UK, 1.5% of GDP is about £40bn – a significant chunk of national income.

Sir Ben Wallace, a former Conservative defence secretary, accused the government of “spin” over its spending pledge because it does not include any new money anytime soon.

“The threat to our country is real not spin,” he told Sky News.

“This government thinks it can use smoke and mirrors to deceive the public and Donald Trump. This is an insult to our troops who will see no significant new money. It fools no one.”

UK

Doctors are using unapproved AI software to record patient meetings, investigation reveals

Published

11 hours ago

June 24, 2025

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Doctors are using unapproved AI software to record patient meetings, investigation reveals

Doctors are using AI software that does not meet minimum standards to record and transcribe patient meetings, according to a Sky News investigation.

NHS bosses have demanded GPs and hospitals stop using artificial intelligence software that could breach data protection rules and put patients at risk.

A warning sent out by NHS England this month came just weeks after the same body wrote to doctors about the benefits of using AI for notetaking – to allow them more time to concentrate on patients – using software known as Ambient Voice Technology, or “AVT”.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting will next week put AI at the heart of the reform plan to save the NHS in the 10-year plan for the health service in England.

But there is growing controversy around software that records, transcribes and summarises patient conversations using AI.

In April, NHS England wrote to doctors to sell the benefits of AVT and set out minimum national standards.

However, in a letter seen by Sky News, NHS bosses wrote to doctors to warn that unapproved software that breached minimum standards could harm patients.

The 9 June letter, from the national chief clinical information officer of NHS England, said: “We are now aware of a number of AVT solutions which, despite being non-compliant … are still being widely used in clinical practice.

“Several AVT suppliers are approaching NHS organisations … many of these vendors have not complied with basic NHS governance standards.

“Proceeding with non-compliant solutions risks clinical safety, data protection breaches, financial exposure, and fragmentation of broader NHS digital strategy.”

Sky News has previously revealed the danger of AI “hallucinations”, where the technology makes up answers then lies about them, which could prove dangerous in a healthcare setting.

NHS England sets minimum standards but does not tell NHS trusts and healthcare providers which software providers to use.

Sky News can now reveal there is growing pressure on NHS England and similar bodies to be more proactive.

Dr David Wrigley, deputy chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said: “Undoubtedly, as a GP myself and my 35,000 colleagues, we’ve got responsibilities here – but in such a rapidly developing market when we haven’t got the technical knowledge to look into this.

“We need that help and support from those who can check that the products are safe, check they’re secure, that they’re suitable for use in the consulting room, and NHS England should do that and help and support us.”

Dr Wrigley continued: “We’re absolutely in favour of tech and in favour of taking that forward to help NHS patients, help my colleagues in their surgeries.

“But it’s got to be done in a safe and secure way because otherwise we could have a free for all – and then data could be lost, it could be leaking out, and that just isn’t acceptable.

“So we are not dinosaurs, we’re very pro-AI, but it has to be a safe, secure way.”

The spectre of dozens of little-known but ambitious AI companies lobbying hospitals and surgeries to get their listening products installed worries some healthcare professionals.

There are huge profits to be made in this technological arms race, but the question being asked is whether hundreds of different NHS organisations can really be expected to sift out the sharks.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the letter was “a really significant moment”.

He said it was right for the NHS to experiment, but that it needed to be clearer what technology does and does not work safely.

“My own view is that the government should help in terms of the procurement decisions that trusts make and should advise on which AI systems – as we do with other forms of technology that we use in medicine – which ones are safe,” Mr Taylor said.

“We’ll need [government] to do a bit more to guide the NHS in the best way to use this.”

When pressed whether in the short term that actually makes it sound like it could be quite dangerous, Mr Taylor replied: “What you’ve seen with ambient voice technology is that kind of ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ approach has got its limits.”

Earlier this year, the health secretary appeared to suggest unapproved technology was being used – but celebrated it as a sign doctors were enthusiastic for change.

Mr Streeting said: “I’ve heard anecdotally down the pub, genuinely down the pub, that some clinicians are getting ahead of the game and are already using ambient AI to kind of record notes and things, even where their practice or their trust haven’t yet caught up with them.

“Now, lots of issues there – not encouraging it – but it does tell me that contrary to this, ‘Oh, people don’t want to change, staff are very happy and they are really resistant to change’, it’s the opposite. People are crying out for this stuff.”

Doctors who use AI that complies with national standards already say there are big benefits.

Anil Mehta, a doctor in the health secretary’s Ilford constituency, told Sky News he backed his MP’s drive for more AI technology in healthcare.

“I spend 30% of my week doing paperwork,” he said. “So I think once I’ve explained all of those features of what we’re doing, patients are extremely reassured. And I haven’t faced anybody that’s not wanted to have me do this.

He added: “(I) think that consultation with your doctor is extremely confidential, so that’s not changed at all.

“That remains confidential – so whether it’s a vulnerable adult, a vulnerable child, teenager, young child with a parent, I think the concept of that confidentiality remains.”

An NHS spokesperson said: “Ambient Voice Technology has the potential to transform care and improve efficiency and in April, the NHS issued guidance to support its use in a safe and secure way.

“We are working with NHS organisations and suppliers to ensure that all Ambient Voice Technology products used across the health service continue to be compliant with NHS standards on clinical safety and data security.”