Young women should not join Army, says mother of soldier who took her life

Young women should not join the Army, according to the mother of a teenage soldier who died after being sexually assaulted by a superior. After her daughter Jaysley Beck was discovered dead in her barracks in Larkhill Camp, Wiltshire, in 2021, Leighann McCready said the armed forces had still not done enough to shield recruits. In July 2021, warrant Officer Michael Webber, 43, pindowned Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck and tried to kiss her. He wasjailed for sexual assault on Friday.

Evidence has shown through our own daughter that the shield is not there,

her mother told BBC Radio 4's Today program.

I wouldn't recommend anyone joining the Army until the rules are changed,

she said.

I would not recommend anyone serving the Army because they shield themselves and not the soldiers.

Army recruits are at a young age, and when they first joined up as females in a hostile group surrounded by a large number of men," says the author. Gunner Beck, who was born in Oxen Park, Cumbria, was not aware of the assault and has apologised for the Army's treatment of her complaint. Her remarks came the day after a military court sentenced Webber to six months in prison for sexually attacking Gunner Beck.

After the shooting, gunner Beck was discovered dead in her barracks five months later. After an evening of heavy drinking while on deployment for a preparation exercise, Webber, a Sergeant Major at the time, made a sexual leap toward her. Beforegrabbing her leg, pinning her down, and attempting to kiss her, gunner Beck said he had been "waiting for a moment for them to be alone. Despite attempts by superiors to convince her not to comply, she lodged a lawsuit against Webber as a result of the incident. The incident was not reported to police, and Webber wrote a letter of apology to Gunner Beck. He was later promoted.

Later, an inquest into Gunner Beck's death discovered that the incident and the Army's failure to take prompt action more than minimally contributed to her death. Ms McCready said it had been relentless to combat the Army and that true changes rather than empty promises and glorified words had been requested. Emma Norton, the family's advocate and director of the Center for Military Justice, said that although there had been some changes to the Army's handling of complaints, they did not go far enough. Since Gunner Beck's death, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has established a serious criminal investigation and created a violence against women and girls, and more recently, has agreed to eliminate serious complaints from the individual services' handling.

They aren't having the effect on the ground that I think the MoD hoped they would have,

Ms Norton said today.

Which isn't to say that there isn’t a continuing effort to improve those services,

says the spokesperson, but we are already getting a lot of complaints against military policing. Ms McCready said she was still being inundated with reports from soldiers and their families, prompting her to keep fighting and encouraging her to stay fighting. Wiltshire Police also revealed offending spanning many decades last week as part of an investigation into suspected sexual assaults during Army medical examinations between the 1970s and 2016.

Ms Norton pleaded for the new independent Armed Forces Commissioner to be in charge of handling serious allegations, and she had urged the military to do more to raise conviction rates for sexual offenses. Following Webber's conviction, the Army announced that it had introduced a significant cultural reform initiative to give service employees

the confidence they need to report sexual offenses and inappropriate conduct. The Army was

sorry we didn't pay attention to Jaysley when she first reported her assault,Maj Gen Jon Swift, deputy chief of the GM, said.We are determined to make sure the same mistakes don't happen again. According to defense minister Louise Sandher-Jones, the Army had acknowledged the service's findings, but "there is more work to be done.

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