Calls grow for inquiry into alleged abuse at Army college for teens

Four women said they were sexually assaulted and harassed while attending the Army Foundation College at Harrogate in North Yorkshire, where the British Army trains recruits aged 16 to 17½. The women said the incidents happened when they were 17, and one said she was raped by several fellow junior soldiers in an attack that lasted hours.

The women described what they said was a dangerous culture of misogyny and sexual violence at the Army Foundation College, the Army’s only junior entry basic training establishment.

In October 2023, a Guardian investigation found that nine rapes at the military college had been reported to civilian police in 13 months, and a Switalskis blog counted nine rapes reported to police in just over a year. In November 2021, an Army Foundation College instructor, referred to as Cpl Hey, was convicted of physically abusing under-18 recruits.

A 2024 submission by the Child Rights International Network to Parliament put the British Army’s annual enlistment of recruits under 18 at about 2,000, mostly for infantry jobs, and said all recruits who join aged 16 to 17½ train at AFC Harrogate. The same submission put girls under 18 at a tenfold risk of sexual abuse in the armed forces compared with adult female personnel.

The Army has called the allegations extremely distressing and unacceptable and says it has a zero-tolerance policy on sexual offences at the Uniacke Barracks site in Harrogate.