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 warned on Saturday.
Leighann McCready claims the Armed Forces has still not done enough to protect recruits after daughter Jaysley Beck was found dead in her barracks in 2021.
She said ‘real changes’ are needed now, not continued ’empty promises and glorified words’, adding: ‘Evidence has shown, through our own daughter, the protection is not there.
‘Until policies are properly changed, I wouldn’t recommend anybody join the Army because they protect themselves and not the soldiers. That’s what happened to Jaysley.’
Ms McCready said recruits are ‘such a vulnerable age when they first join up as females surrounded by lots of men’.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today show whether measures by the Ministry of Defence to improve safeguards were working, she said: ‘Absolutely not. I’m still contacted by other soldiers, parents… this is still happening.
‘Only this week I’ve been inundated by people saying, “Leighann, please keep fighting…because I too am going through this right now in the military”.’
Her comments follow Friday’s sentencing of senior officer Michael Webber, 43, to six months in prison after he admitted sexual assault.
Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck, 19, was found hanging in her room at Larkhill Camp, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, on December 15, 2021
Leighann McCready (right) described daughter Jaysley Beck as ‘a beautiful, bright, confident girl’ who was ‘failed by the system that was meant to support and protect her’
Michael Webber, now 43, was sentenced to six months in prison after he pinned Jaysley down and tried to kiss her during a training exercise, an inquest heard in February this year
A court martial heard how, as a battery sergeant major in the Royal Artillery, he lured Ms Beck, 19, into a drinking game during an exercise in Hampshire in July 2021.
He touched her thigh and tried to kiss her, but she pushed him away and spent the night locked in her car.
Although she made a formal complaint to senior officers the following morning, they failed to report it to police and instead persuaded her to accept a letter of apology. Webber was subsequently promoted.
Ms Beck was also targeted by a male line manager, who bombarded her with voicemail and text messages. She did not report it, having apparently decided it was pointless.
She was found dead at Larkhill Camp, Wiltshire, in December 2021.
A coroner condemned ‘systemic’ flaws in the way the Army investigated her ordeal and said officers sought to find the least serious punishment for Webber.
Ms McCready’s call for a complete overhaul of the complaints procedure has been backed by the Centre for Military Justice.
The charity’s founder, solicitor Emma Norton, acknowledged the MoD had introduced measures such as a serious crime command and a violence against women and girls taskforce.
But she added: ‘They are not having the impact on the ground I think the MoD hoped they would… we are still seeing very serious complaints against military policing.’
Following Webber’s conviction, the Army said it had introduced a cultural reform programme to give service personnel ‘the confidence they need to report sexual offences and inappropriate behaviours’.
Defence Minister Louise Sandher-Jones said she is ‘committed to driving change’.
Major General Jon Swift, Assistant Chief of the General Staff, added: ‘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.’
Ms McCready said: ‘No sentence would be long enough for what [Webber] did. To fight the Army as a family has been extremely difficult [but] we’re not stopping.’
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