Abuse of cadets on scale of Savile was covered up, claim victims

ALMOST 100 cadet force instructors have been dismissed in the past five years after allegations of sex abuse, and leaders repeatedly tried to cover up past allegations, an investigation has found.

Parents of cadets who had been abused were encouraged not to go to the police as cadet organisations tried to hush up the accusations, it is alleged.

A total of 363 sexual abuse allegations, both current and historic, have been made across the Army, Air and Sea Cadet forces since 2012, a sevenmonth investigation by BBC Panorama found. Lawyers representing victims of the abuse last night claimed the scale was likely to mirror that exposed in the Catholic Church and the Jimmy Savile case. The Army, Air and Sea Cadets combined make up one of Britain’s largest youth groups, responsible for nearly 130,000 children in more than 3,000 clubs across the country.

Former cadets who claimed they had been abused in the Eighties said when their parents or loved ones raised concerns, they were urged not to tell the police.

To date the Ministry of Defence has paid out more than £2million to victims of the abuse.

David Mcclenaghan, the head of the abuse department at law firm Bolt Burdon Kemp, which is representing victims, said: “I have absolutely no doubts that the abuse in the cadets will mirror the other scandals like the Jimmy Savile case, like the abuse in the Scouts, like abuse in the Catholic Church.” One victim identified only as Martin said he was 12 when he was “systematically abused and raped repeatedly over many years” by his commanding officer Brian Leonard, at Tennal Grange cadet base in Birmingham.

He told the programme: “You are trained to follow orders and you are trained to respect the officers and do as they tell you. That includes having to lie on the floor on a dirty blanket and just lie there and … take it like a man.”

The programme spoke to 10 men who were abused by Leonard in the Eighties. Martin said: “The thing was it was so blatantly obvious, it was almost as if it was hidden in full sight.”

A girlfriend of one of the victims threatened to report Leonard to police in 1987, but cadet officers pressured her to keep quiet. The sergeant said he would take a statement from her, but warned her not to approach the police. No investigation into Leonard was ever carried out and he died in 1996.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed police have investigated 282 allegations of abuse in the past five years and 99 instructors have been dismissed.

An MOD spokesman said: “We encourage anyone who has been a victim to report it to police.”