Anyone who knows, has, or has been a teenager will know and understand that, while legally an adult, Jaysley Beck will have nonetheless found it very difficult to navigate and manage the appalling behaviours of the older males that surrounded her. For more details on what happened to Jaysley and what the Coroner at her inquest found, see the preceding post.
Jaysley’s case should cause us to reflect upon the immense burden that women in the military have to carry in managing the behaviours of some of the men around them. Whether it’s trying to deal with over-friendly borderline inappropriate behaviours, right the way through to sexual assaults, the women we’ve heard from at the CMJ and who have posted in recent days on the Fill Your Boots facebook page/twitter will say that the burden falls on them at every stage – not to place themselves in harm’s way, not to drink too much (while attending all expected work-social events), not to take a joke badly, not to upset a male colleague by rejecting his advances, or by calling out his behaviours, being told to think about the impact on his career and family if they should report him, and all the while describing a lack of faith in the systems for reporting or raising a complaint, and then being victimised if they do complain.
To a great extent these are reflections of problems women face in wider society – but because of the all-encompassing nature of military life, and because women are in such a minority there, it can be so much worse for them. Service personnel cannot just pack their bags and leave. Lots of women in the military are able to achieve fantastic things in their careers – Jaysley loved her job until those final months and excelled at it – but when things go wrong, they can go catastrophically wrong. Though an adult, Jaysley was so young and had such little power or control over the many dysfunctional men whose conduct we heard so much about at her inquest. Other young women that gave evidence described many ‘vile and degrading’ words and behaviours and remained extremely angry and upset while speaking about it. One witness was very clear that she had not been able to give her evidence freely about these issues to the Army’s internal ‘Service Inquiry’ on the subject because her line manager had been in the room the whole time she was giving evidence.
What is absolutely clear is that Jaysley could not rely upon the Army to help her identify and deal with the male behaviours she was experiencing. How we can better support young women going into this environment to understand, identify and deal with behaviours like those perpetrated against Jaysley, as well as the less extreme but nonetheless toxic behaviours others have described, is something the military must address radically and urgently.