Navy sailor says she was raped on ship and told to have abortion
THE Royal Navy is to investigate allegations made by a former female sailor who said that she was raped on a warship and then told to get an abortion.
The victim claimed she experienced numerous instances of sexual harassment and was warned against reporting the incidents because she would be labelled a “trouble maker”.
She said that when she was raped, which resulted in her becoming pregnant, she suffered such horrific injuries that she feared doctors seeing her body when she gave birth.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour that she recently obtained her medical record from the time of the rape and noted that there was no mention of the bruising and cuts she sustained. Instead, she was diagnosed with being “homesick” and prescribed sleeping tablets. She did not report the rape.
The victim, whose name has not been revealed, claimed that after her pregnancy became known she was told by a senior officer that she had brought shame on the Navy for being “a single female that had become pregnant while at sea”. She added that the same officer told her if she was his daughter he would be “ashamed” of her.
“He actually gave me a few extra days off to go home and contemplate my future and told me in no uncertain terms that an appointment could be made for me next week and I could go back to the ship with no questions asked,” she said.
“So when you’ve got people like that who are the very people you could potentially complain to, or raise these issues to, saying that you are the one that’s done the wrongdoing, that’s brought shame on the Navy, that you are the one bringing us into disrepute, how on earth do you open your mouth and say ‘hold up, but not once have you asked me if I’m OK with this’,” she said.
Her comments come after several women came forward last month to reveal they had faced mistreatment over the course of a decade. Adml Sir Ben Key, the First Sea Lord, said then that sexual harassment would not be tolerated and anyone found culpable would be “held accountable”.
Responding to the most recent victim’s allegations, Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, said he was “serious about tackling this issue”, and added that the military he left 25 years ago was “a very different Armed Forces and I would challenge the assertion that the reforms we are making aren’t changing things”.
He added: “We are removing service complaints from the chain of command, investing in a new serious crime unit across all services, linking poor responses by commanders to their careers, taking fast administrative action to remove people when required, and ensuring a stricter code of Crown Prosecution Service or Service Prosecuting Authority trial paths than ever before. Things are changing and many women serving today would say they are, but there are challenges as there are in the civilian world, so please don’t judge us on historical [events].”
However, Luke Pollard, the shadow Armed Forces minister, questioned when the Conservatives will “give our service personnel the support and justice they deserve”.
An MOD spokesman said it took “any complaint of this magnitude extremely seriously and are ready to take forward any and all evidence the individual involved may wish to share”.