Month: February 2011

One in 10 Army recruits ‘bullied and intimidated’

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A decade after Deepcut, MoD reports reveal failure to tackle problem affecting hundreds of trainees.

Hundreds of young army recruits are still suffering from physical beatings and intimidation at the hands of their instructors, despite a series of fatalities at training camps in recent years and amid allegations that soldiers were being bullied to death.

A series of previously unpublicised reports obtained by this newspaper highlight growing concern surrounding the issue this weekend. They include a new annual survey of recruits by the Ministry of Defence that reveals that hundreds report having been beaten or intimidated by their superiors. More than one in 10 of all trainee soldiers – what the report describes as a “notable minority” – claimed to have been unfairly or badly treated and, of these, more than one in five said they had been picked on continually.

According to the report, made available to MPs just over a week ago, less than three-quarters of recruits felt that training was always conducted without sexual or racial harassment. And nearly a quarter did not feel able to take their concerns to a person in authority.

Another, unpublished, report obtained this weekend sheds light on the extent of abuse being suffered by service personnel.… Read more

More than 17,000 episodes of troops going Awol since 2003

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British soldiers have gone on the run from their posts on more than 17,000 occasions since the start of the Iraq war, The Independent can reveal.

As resources for the armed forces remain stretched to cope with Britain’s commitments in Afghanistan, official figures from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) show that there were more than 2,000 cases of soldiers going absent without leave (awol) last year, with 17,470 incidents recorded since the Iraq invasion in 2003.

The internal Government statistics, released to The Independent under the Freedom of Information Act, show that 375 soldiers remained at large at the end of last year, although MoD sources insisted that the figure has since fallen. Army officials are battling hard to tackle the problem that has persisted throughout Britain’s gruelling operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.… Read more