The Family Secret: How Rape is Hushed Up in Britain’s Armed Forces
/Salute Her UK supported and continue to engage with and offer trauma informed therapy to the women survivors of military sexual assault featured in this journalistic article by Isobel Thompson.
It’s hard to assess the full extent of sexual assault within Britain’s armed forces. The figures that do exist are almost certainly an underestimate – as they tend to be with sexual assault in civilian life – because many people never report what has happened to them. The hierarchical nature of the armed forces, in which reporting an abuse is often seen as subversive, particularly discourages victims from speaking up. Around 10% of people in the armed forces are women; only 5% of senior officers are.
A growing body of court cases, reports and testimonies from individuals in the forces indicates the scale of the problem. In 2012 Channel 4 News obtained details of an internal investigation in the British Army which suggested that all of the 400 women interviewed had received unwanted sexual attention and that many felt an “over-riding” lack of trust in the ability of senior officers to handle complaints about such concerns.
