https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/t...tary-pkvck6nbg
Tenfold rise in rapes and sexual assaults on girls in military
Complaints of rape and sexual assault made by girls under 18 in the military have risen tenfold since 2015, Ministry of Defence figures reveal.
Freedom of information requests show that girls under 18 in the armed forces have made 41 complaints of rape and sexual assault to the military police since 2015. With an average of 215 girls under 18 serving between 2015 and 2020, it is said to be equivalent to one report for every 40 girls. This makes girls in the armed forces more than twice as likely as their civilian counterparts to report a rape or sexual assault to police.
The numbers have emerged as the Armed Forces Bill progresses through the Lords. The Lyons Review, commissioned in advance of the bill, recommended that serious crimes including rape are removed from the military’s internal systems and handed to the civilian police, but the bill does not seek this.
Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, lifted a gagging order this year to allow servicewomen to give evidence to a defence committee inquiry into women in the armed forces. One in ten serving women made a submission, and 64 per cent of veterans and 58 per cent of serving women said that they had experienced bullying, harassment and discrimination. Six in ten did not report what happened and a third of those who did said that the experience was “extremely poor”.
Martin Docherty-Hughes, a member of the committee, said that the “sickening” new numbers showed that the government needed to “act hard and act fast to root out this horror”.
Charlotte Cooper, from the Child Rights International Network, who made the FOI requests, said: “Any rape or sexual assault of a child in an institution tasked with their care is unacceptable but one report for every 40 girls is abhorrent. This would never be considered acceptable in a civilian school or workplace.”
In the past year more than 3,000 teenagers under 18 enlisted, mainly to the army, where they make up a quarter of the intake. The numbers of enlisted girls aged 16 and 17 grew from 190 in 2015 to 290 this year. So far in 2021 there have been ten reports of rape and sexual assault, or one for every 29 girls…….