Army protects itself, not soldiers, says Jaysley Beck’s mother

Young women should not join the Army, the mother of a teenage soldier who took her own life after being sexually assaulted by a superior has said.

Leighann McCready said the armed forces had still not done enough to protect recruits after her daughter Jaysley Beck was found hanged in her barracks in Larkhill Camp, Wiltshire, in 2021.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Evidence has shown through our own daughter that the protection is not there.

“And until policies are properly changed, I wouldn’t recommend anybody joining the Army because they protect themselves and not the soldiers, and that’s what happened to our daughter Jaysley.

“Army recruits are such a vulnerable age and when they first join up, as females, in such a minority surrounded by lots of men.”

Her comments come the day after a former senior non-commissioned officer, 43-year-old Michael Webber, was jailed for six months by a military court after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting Gunner Beck five months before her death.

Then a battery sergeant major in the Royal Artillery, Webber had engaged Gunner Beck in a drinking game before touching her thigh and trying to kiss her.

Gunner Beck pushed Webber away and spent the night locked in her car before making a complaint to her superiors in the morning.

However, the incident was not reported to police and Webber wrote a letter of apology to Gunner Beck. He was later promoted.

An inquest into Gunner Beck’s death later found that the incident and the Army’s failure to take appropriate action “more than minimally” contributed to her death.

Ms McCready said it had been “relentless to fight the Army” and demanded “real changes” rather than “empty promises and glorified words”.

Emma Norton, the family’s solicitor and director of the Centre for Military Justice, said that while there had been some improvements to the Army’s process for handling complaints, they did not go far enough.

Since Gunner Beck’s death, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has set up a serious crime command and launched a violence against women and girls taskforce, and more recently has agreed in principle to remove the handling of serious complaints from the individual services.

But Ms Norton told Today: “They are not having the impact on the ground that I think the MoD hoped they would have.

“Which isn’t to say that there isn’t a continued commitment to want to improve those things, but we are still seeing very serious complaints against military policing.”

Ms McCready added that she was still being “inundated” with stories from soldiers and their families saying “this is still happening” and urging her to “keep fighting”.

Last week also saw Wiltshire Police announce it had identified “offending spanning several decades” as part of an investigation into alleged sexual assaults during Army medical examinations between the 1970s and 2016.

Ms Norton called for the new independent Armed Forces Commissioner to be given responsibility for handling serious complaints, and called on the military to do more to improve conviction rates for sexual offences.

Following Webber’s conviction, the Army said it had introduced a significant cultural reform programme to give service personnel “the confidence they need to report sexual offences and inappropriate behaviours”.

Major General Jon Swift, the Assistant Chief of the General Staff, said: “The end of this court martial is another traumatic step in the journey for Jaysley’s family and we acknowledge that today’s outcome has come too late for their beloved daughter.

“We are sorry we didn’t listen to Jaysley when she first reported her assault.

“We are determined to make sure the same mistakes don’t happen again.”

Defence minister Louise Sandher-Jones said: “We are honouring Jaysley’s legacy by bringing about crucial reform, to provide a place where people are proud to work and have faith in the service justice system.

“The Army has accepted the failings identified by the service inquiry in full and has also responded to the recommendations to improve service life across its culture, policies and practices.

“However, there is more work to be done. As a minister and Army veteran, this mission is deeply personal to me and I am committed to driving the necessary change to prevent this from happening again.”