A whistleblower has said orgies in the army are fairly common as she warned the recent incident at Merlville Baracks points to a wider culture of misogyny in the armed forces which views women as “lesser beings”.
Speaking exclusively to The Independent , the woman, who previously worked in recruitment for the army, said the institution often felt like a throwback to the 1950s.
It comes after a group of paratroopers were put under military police investigation after footage surfaced of them having an orgy with a civilian woman at Merville Barracks – a military base in Colchester.
Video clips, seen by The Independent, show a woman having sex with troops from 16 Air Assault Brigade while others watched. Some of the soldiers can be seen laughing.
In other clip, a man asks “have you had a go yet?”, while another troop salutes while having sex. The video, which includes some half-naked and fully naked soldiers, shows sexual acts occurring in both communal places and private rooms, but it is not immediately clear when it happened.
Talking to The Independent from a military estate where she lives with her husband who is in the army, the woman said an ex-soldier, who she hadn’t heard from in months, had sent her 11 unsolicited highly graphic videos of the incident at Merlville.
She found the footage “extremely distressing and disturbing” and said it gave her nightmares, explaining that even if the encounter was consensual, the fact the soldiers can be heard “laughing” and mocking the woman was “degrading”.
“It is misogynistic,” she added. “It is an embarrassment to the army. It shows a serious lack of professionalism and decent human behaviour in general.”
Her comments come as General Sir Patrick Sanders, the army’s new head, announced hundreds of paratroops were barred from a Nato deployment to the Balkans following the incident, because he was unwilling to “risk the mission or the reputation of the British army” by sending the troops abroad.
But the whistleblower said stories of group sex similar to what occurred at Merlville, were commonpace in the army, claiming some soldiers would say such incidents were “normal”, insisting “it is just boys being boys”.
She added: “I find raising children in this environment very scary. Among many men in the army, there is the assumption women are joining the army for sex, or at least they must expect that to happen if they do join.
“I’ve seen a lot of slut-shaming. In general it is assumed that females in the military must be sleeping with multiple members of the Battalion.”
She described the armed forces as having a “very sexually charged culture” plagued with the commonly held view that women are “objects for the pleasure of men”.
The whistleblower said: “In my experience, the sexual culture is really rife when soldiers are young and living in the block. Sometimes women are snuck in inside the boot of people’s cars. The drinking culture is something else.
“You hear stories of single soldiers living on the block drinking every weekend, fights consistently happening, and property being damaged. When soldiers get married then it can move into swinging.”
Discussing her own negative experiences of working in military recruitment, she said she stepped down after facing sexual harassment, sexism and gender-based discrimination.
She said it felt “hyprocritical” being asked to encourage women to join the army given her own experiences.
The whistleblower added: “I’m not surprised women face sexual harassment and assault in the army given it starts in the recruitment process.
“The people who are doing the recruitment process are biased. They have judgements about women being in the army, they don’t believe they can do it. They refer to women in derogatory ways. They think the standards for women aren’t as high. They talk about the fact women have their periods.”
