Army of abuse—teenage girls raped and treated like ‘pieces of meat’

The army cannot protect girls from violence and abuse because violence and abuse is baked into its structures and hierarchies (Photo: Flickr)

Teenage girls raped, abused and treated like “pieces of meat”, while the authorities ignore it not once or twice but for years.

The grooming gang which perpetrated this abuse was not Pakistani, or Muslim, or Asian. It was the British Army.

Four young women have come forward to describe how they were sexually assaulted and harassed at an army training college when they were 17 years old.

The women attended the Army Foundation College (AFC) for teenagers at Harrogate, North Yorkshire, over the past five years.

But it wasn’t just teenage boys who were allowed to attack the girls—it was the army staff.

The North Yorkshire Police received 16 reports of sexual offences linked to the college in the year to June, according to a Freedom of Information request.

AFC is the largest military training establishment for under-19s in Britain and it receives all the army’s 16-year-old recruits.

One woman described being raped at AFC by several fellow soldiers. “There were a lot of them,” she said. “They touched me in places, made inappropriate comments, calling me a thing rather than a girl.

“And then I was raped by multiple junior soldiers, same age as me. It went on for hours. I felt like a piece of meat.”

After she was raped, she says she heard an instructor saying, “Have you heard about that slag who shagged all those blokes?”

The woman reported the alleged rape to police but no charges were brought. The Crown Prosecution Service later described it as an “entirely inadequate” police investigation.

A second woman says a fellow soldier trapped her in a room and attacked her.

“He stood against the door so I couldn’t get out,” she said. “He then pushed himself up against me, started kissing my face and touching me all over. He sexually assaulted me.”

“I managed to push him off. I’m not sure how because he’s really strong.” 

Another girl, who was also sexually assaulted, said she had to sleep across the door of her room to stop soldiers coming in as her lock was broken.

The fourth woman who has come forward says the misogynistic attitudes of army staff openly encouraged the abuse.

She remembers how an instructor told a group of new recruits, “It’s all about the pussy and how much of it you can get.”

Instructors would also mark girls’ looks out of 10. They would “walk into our dorms without knocking, and we’d be standing there just in our knickers,” she said. “They would just stare.”

The army says the AFC remains committed to creating a professional, supportive and safe environment for all recruits. “Any suggestion otherwise contradicts the values of respect and inclusivity that we stand for,” it claimed.

This is a lie—and it is a lie backed up by Ofsted, the schools inspectorate.

The army says the Children’s Commissioner and safeguarding authorities visited AFC in January 2026. They praised “the culture of care and the confidence junior soldiers have in raising concerns”.

The college’s “robust discipline system” has been consistently graded as “outstanding” by Ofsted, which visits the college every three years.

How can AFC be “outstanding” when a total of 176 complaints of inappropriate sexual behaviour were made between January 2018 and June 2025?

The abuse has been going on for years. A British Army Service Inquiry into the suicide of Jaysley Beck took place in 2023.

Former sergeant major Michael Webber was last year jailed for six months for sexually assaulting Beck in July of 2021. She was found dead five months later in her barracks at Larkhill, Wiltshire.

The inquiry found that, when she attended AFC for two-and-a-half months in 2015, one of her instructors groomed her and started a sexual relationship with her.

AFC can never protect girls from violence and abuse because violence and abuse is baked into the structures and hierarchies of the army.

An army which sanctions the rape and abuse of its own soldiers will inevitably commit more awful crimes when it is let loose on those it calls the enemy.

And the far right, who claim to care about violence against women and girls, is maintaining a deafening silence on this appalling litany of abuse.

A history of scandal

2024: The conviction of former AFC recruit, Private McGregor-Freeburn, for twice abusing an under-18 female recruit.

He sexually assaulted her while she was on the AFC medical wing in 2021.

The conviction of AFC instructor Corporal Conway for the rape of an adult colleague in her room at AFC while she was asleep.

2023: The conviction of AFC instructor, Corporal Bartram, for the serial sexual exploitation of six women under-18 for ten months.

Nine rapes at the Harrogate military college reported to civilian police over a 13-month period to the middle of August 2023.