Soldier thrown out for forcing recruits to strip
A SOLDIER has been dismissed from the Army after he forced junior recruits to take part in a naked boxing initiation ceremony.
Rifleman Kieran Trewin admitted running the “naked ice breakers”, where young soldiers were made to stand on a chair and strip off in front of up to 20 colleagues.
They were then questioned about their sex lives while the 26-year-old “slapped” their genitals, a military court at Tidworth garrison, Wilts, was told.
The soldiers were also forced to box each other “completely naked” behind locked doors in a kitchen at barracks in Chepstow.
Six junior soldiers were instructed to stand on a chair and strip. One refused and left for his room, the court heard, but the rest did what they were told.
One said the event “caught me by surprise”.
“Rfn Trewin called out our names and we were told to strip down naked, present ourselves on a chair and tell our life stories,” he said. “I was not happy with it. It made me uncomfortable.”
Another soldier told the court how, after being subjected to similar ridicule, he was forced to fight a fellow junior soldier naked.
“Everyone in the kitchen watched us fight. Rfn Trewin and [another soldier] were coaching us and encouraging us to be aggressive towards the other person,” he told the court, recalling how he was “knocked to the floor”.
Rfn Trewin, who joined the Army in 2016, had denied indecently touching two soldiers and punching another, but pleaded guilty to four other charges, including one of running the ceremony.
The father of one was convicted of all of the offences.
He was sentenced to 18 months’ detention at the Military Corrective Training Centre in Colchester and dismissed from the military.
Judge Advocate Andrew Smith told him: “There was an abuse of your position of responsibility as a senior rifleman... you were looked up to. There is no room for initiation ceremonies in the military.”