Army instructors who start sexual relationships with recruits could face jail within a year
Ben Wallace draws up tougher punishments against officials following claims of a ‘toxic culture’ of sexual assault at Sandhurst
How was this even allowed to start in the first place?
Thought it was the golden, absolute, rule. No shagging across ranks in the same unit?
Is it normal for Sergeants to go around bumming the squaddies ?
I thought that only happened in the Russian ( and Mid Eastern ) army these days ?
Things like this happen in part because of poor leadership and the low standard of recruits/training?
This is just a typical government reaction to bad press – pass another law whether we already have one or not.
The rule used to be, and I don’t see why it would be changed, that young officers in training had to go more than 3 miles from the college to socialise so that they wouldn’t be mixing with non-commissioned staff.
Reminds me of a story which I think is in the Milligan oeuvre.
Judge gives harsh sentence for sexual offence against public decency..
Accused replies “Tha can punish me how you like, tha won’t stop shaggin’ in Bradford.”
Shagging the the services always went on, but now there are lots of girls and girlie boys in the mix. It used to be secret and leadership didn’t know. If they found out someone, usually the shaggee, was gone without charge, trial or delay.
“In the process of syphilisation
From anthropoid ape down to man
It is generally held that the navy
Will bugger whatever it can”.
I have always assumed that this universal truth applied equally across all the services. The proliferation of female recruits in recent decades can’t have helped.
Incidentally Sir Pterry alluded to a similar propensity in his epic poem “The Hedgehog Song”.
When I was in, almost a decade ago now, the strict prohibition against relationships across the ranks had been binned, the placed with the Service Test: has it badly affected, or is it likely to affect the operational effectiveness of your unit. If so the full 24 hour posting and associated administrative action would kick in. Not disciplinary though, so a year in the glasshouse was not on the menu. Trainer/trainee would obviously fail the Service Test…
One of the problems is that the dearth of ladies in a military environment means that even a 4 gets treated like an 8. She shacks up with a bloke, expects it to last. At the end of the tour the bloke enters the real world and discovers he can get an 8, so he unceremoniously dumps her. This chain of events seems like a plausible precursor to a false accusation of rape.