Major cleared as judge urges rape law review

Army officer found not guilty of attacking female captain after neither could properly recall events

PARLIAMENT should review the law on rape cases in which neither party can remember having sex, a military judge has suggested, after clearing an Army major of attacking a female captain. Following his arrest on suspicion of rape, Major Gregor Beaton, 33, told Royal Military Police he was too drunk to remember having sex and suggested he may have been assaulted.

Major Beaton, who served in Afghanistan, said: “I did not want sexual contact. I did not initiate it.”

When told his DNA was found inside the woman, he insisted that it meant he must have been forced into sex and should consider making a complaint himself.

Major Beaton, a Sandhurst graduate of the 14th Regiment, Royal Artillery, broke down in tears as a panel of senior officers cleared him of the accusations yesterday.

Jeff Blackett, the Judge Advocate General, said: “You have been found not guilty by this board. It is intolerable that this case has taken so long to get to court and that is unacceptable … This was an unusual case because neither party can remember having sex.”

The judge said that, in his view, “Parliament should look again” at the law surrounding incidents where neither party could properly recall events, adding: “There must be a better way of dealing with these cases.” The threeday trial heard the female officer had been so drunk during a Burns Night supper on a military base that a female colleague had to put her to bed.

The woman previously said that she was horrified when she woke naked in her bed the morning after the event next to Major Beaton with “absolutely no memory” of what had happened.

She had been “flirting” with another soldier during the evening and at first thought it was him, but when she saw it was Major Beaton, whom she barely knew, she said she panicked. When she confronted Major Beaton, he said he was “99 per cent sure” nothing had happened, the court heard.

Giving evidence at Bulford military court, Major Beaton said he “didn’t have anything to hide” and had simply chatted to the woman, who had wandered into his room. He said he took her back to her dorm and they talked for a while, before he fell asleep in an armchair.

He said he woke when the woman went to the bathroom, then sat on the end of her bed and wrapped himself in a blanket, but accidentally fell asleep. The woman later went for a medical examination which revealed she had Major Beaton’s DNA inside her.

The court heard that during the Burns Night event, Major Beaton drank two highballs of beer, a few glasses of white wine and a small glass of port. He also later drank Jägermeister and at least five measures of whisky. The female captain drank red wine, Jägermeister, prosecco and whisky.

A five-person board, made up of one woman and four men, took an hour and 45 minutes of deliberation to clear Major Beaton of a single count of rape, which he had denied.