‘Toxic’ army unit charged with investigating sex crimes allowing abusers to ‘get away with it’ in own ranks, whistleblower says
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.”
Amy, a former RMP officer who alleges sexual abuse in the armed forces
‘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.
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From March: Army women reveal alleged abuse
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.”
Tan Dhesi MP told Sky News that ‘the system needs to change… 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.
Katie (centre), who resigned from the armed forces after alleged sexual abuse, as a serving RMP officer
“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
No 10 backs Chancellor Rachel Reeves and says she ‘is going nowhere’ after tearful appearance in Commons
Rachel Reeves has not offered her resignation and is “going nowhere”, Downing Street has said, following her tearful appearance in the House of Commons.
A Number 10 spokesperson said the chancellor had the “full backing” of Sir Keir Starmer, despite Ms Reeves looking visibly upset during Prime Minister’s Questions.
Politics latest: ‘A moment of intense peril’ for PM
A spokesperson for the chancellor later clarified that Ms Reeves had been affected by a “personal matter” and would be working out of Downing Street this afternoon.
Politics latest: Reeves looks visibly upset in Commons
UK government bond prices fell by the most since October 2022, and the pound tumbled after Ms Reeves’s Commons appearance, while the yield on the 10-year government bond, or gilt, rose as much as 22 basis points at one point to around 4.68%.
Downing Street’s insistence came despite Sir Keir refusing to guarantee that Ms Reeves would stay as chancellor until the next election following the fallout from the government’s recent welfare U-turn.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch branded the chancellor the “human shield” for the prime minister’s “incompetence” just hours after he was forced to perform a humiliating U-turn over his controversial welfare bill.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Ms Badenoch said: “This man has forgotten that his welfare bill was there to plug a black hole created by the chancellor. Instead they’re creating new ones.”
Turning to the chancellor, the Tory leader added: “[She] is pointing at me – she looks absolutely miserable.
“Labour MPs are going on the record saying that the chancellor is toast, and the reality is that she is a human shield for his incompetence. In January, he said that she would be in post until the next election. Will she really?”
Not fully answering the question, the prime minister replied: “[Ms Badenoch] certainly won’t.
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Welfare vote ‘a blow to the prime minister’
“I have to say, I’m always cheered up when she asks me questions or responds to a statement because she always makes a complete mess of it and shows just how unserious and irrelevant they are.”
Mrs Badenoch interjected: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”
The prime minister’s watered-down Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill, aimed at saving £5bn, was backed by a majority of 75 in a tense vote on Tuesday evening.
A total of 49 Labour MPs voted against the bill – the largest rebellion in a prime minister’s first year in office since 47 MPs voted against Tony Blair’s Lone Parent benefit in 1997, according to Professor Phil Cowley from Queen Mary University.
After multiple concessions made due to threats of a Labour rebellion, many MPs questioned what they were voting for as the bill had been severely stripped down.
They ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to Universal Credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.
Ms Badenoch said the climbdown was proof that Sir Keir was “too weak to get anything done”.
Read more:
The PM faced down his party on welfare and lost
Labour welfare cuts ‘Dickensian’, says rebel MP
Ms Reeves has also borne a lot of the criticism over the handling of the vote, with some MPs believing that her strict approach to fiscal rules has meant she has approached the ballooning welfare bill from the standpoint of trying to make savings, rather than getting people into work.
Experts have now warned that the welfare U-turn, on top of reversing the cut to winter fuel, means that tax rises in the autumn are more likely – with Ms Reeves now needing to find £5bn to make up for the policy U-turns.
Asked by Ms Badenoch whether he could rule out further tax rises – something Labour promised it would not do on working people in its manifesto – Sir Keir said: “She knows that no prime minister or chancellor ever stands at the despatch box and writes budgets in the future.
“But she talks about growth, for 14 years we had stagnation, and that is what caused the problem.”
Prosecutors are considering whether to bring further criminal charges against Lucy Letby over the deaths of babies at two hospitals where she worked
The Crown Prosecution Service said it had received “a full file of evidence from Cheshire Constabulary asking us to consider further allegations in relation to deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital”.
“We will now carefully consider the evidence to determine whether any further criminal charges should be brought,” it added.
“As always, we will make that decision independently, based on the evidence and in line with our legal test.”
Letby, 35, was found guilty of murdering seven children and attempting to murder seven more between June 2015 and June 2016 while working in the neonatal unit of the Countess of Chester Hospital and is currently serving 15 whole-life orders.
Letby worked at the Countess of Chester Hospital and Liverpool Women’s Hospital
She is understood to have carried out two work placements at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where she trained as a student, between October and December 2012, and January and February 2015.
Police said in December that Letby was interviewed in prison as part of an investigation into more baby deaths and non-fatal collapses.
A Cheshire Constabulary spokesperson said: “We can confirm that Cheshire Constabulary has submitted a full file of evidence to the CPS for charging advice regarding the ongoing investigation into deaths and non-fatal collapses of babies at the neo-natal units of both the Countess of Chester Hospital and the Liverpool Women’s Hospital as part of Operation Hummingbird.”
Detectives previously said the investigation was looking into the full period of time that Letby worked as a nurse, covering the period from 2012 to 2016 and including a review of 4,000 admissions of babies.
Letby’s lawyer Mark McDonald said: “The evidence of the innocence of Lucy Letby is overwhelming,” adding: “We will cross every bridge when we get to it but if Lucy is charged I know we have a whole army of internationally renowned medical experts who will totally undermine the prosecution’s unfounded allegations.”
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Three managers at the hospital where Lucy Letby worked have been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter.
On Tuesday, it was confirmed that three managers at the Countess of Chester hospital had been arrested on suspicion of gross negligence manslaughter in a separate investigation.
Read more from Sky News:
‘Catastrophic failure’ that led to Heathrow power outage revealed
Man charged with murder of 93-year-old woman in Cornwall
Police said the suspects, who occupied senior positions at the hospital between 2015 and 2016, have all been bailed pending further inquiries.
There is also an investigation into corporate manslaughter at the hospital, which began in October 2023.
A public inquiry has also been examining the hospital’s response to concerns raised about Letby before her arrest.
In May, it was announced the inquiry’s final report into how the former nurse was able to commit her crimes will now be published early next year.
Earlier this year, Letby’s lawyers called for the suspension of the inquiry, claiming there was “overwhelming and compelling evidence” that her convictions were unsafe.
In February, an international panel of neonatologists and paediatric specialists told reporters that poor medical care and natural causes were the reasons for the collapses and deaths.
Their evidence has been passed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, and Letby’s legal team hopes her case will be referred back to the Court of Appeal.
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