Healey vows ‘new determination’ to protect women after Jaysley Beck’s death

Defence Secretary John Healey said there is “new determination” to ensure the military does not fail women after a sergeant was jailed for sexually assaulting a teenage soldier who later took her own life.

The mother of Jaysley Beck, 19, who died in her barracks at Larkhill Camp, Wiltshire, in 2021, said young women should not join the Army as the armed forces had still not done enough to protect recruits.

Leighann McCready 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.”

Speaking in Uxbridge, West London, on Monday, Mr Healey told the PA news agency: “I can’t begin to imagine what Jaysley’s mother is still going through and her loss is also felt very deeply still in the Army.

“And what I can say to Jaysley’s mother is that we have new leadership in the military now, we have a new determination to make sure that never again will the military fail as they failed her daughter.”

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.

Al Carns, minister for the armed forces, said: “I think the Gunner Beck case was a horrendous failing of the system.

“What I can tell you is in the last several years there’s been lots of changes, in the last year we’ve really made a proactive move to create the correct systems so no woman ever feels alone again in defence.”

Former senior non-commissioned officer, Michael Webber, 43, was jailed for six months by a military court last week 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.

She 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”.

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.”