A former Army Battery Sergeant Major, Michael Webber, has pleaded guilty to sexual assault of the late Gnr Jaysley Beck, after being charged with that offence by the Service Prosecuting Authority last month.
Leighann McCready, Jaysley’s mum said:
“We are relieved that Michael Webber has admitted his guilt and not put us through the trauma of yet more legal proceedings but nothing can undo the devastating loss of our beautiful daughter Jaysley.
It’s hard to believe it has taken so long for there to be any accountability for this crime. Jaysley did everything right. She reported the assault immediately, not once but twice. First to her captain who dismissed and dissuaded her from going further. And even then, she went over his head and reported it up the chain. But her chain of command still failed her. They did not do what the rules at the time required them to do – which was to report it to the police. If they had done that one simple thing, we believe with all our hearts she would still be with us today. But because they didn’t, she lost faith that she would be believed or supported the next time she needed help – which was just a few weeks later when another senior male starting harassing her too. By this point she felt she had nowhere to turn.
After Jayley’s death, we’ve tried hard to get to the bottom of what happened. No-one was listening. Thankfully, the Coroner listened to us and held a thorough and full enquiry, concluding among other things that Jaysley had been sexually assaulted after all, something we never doubted. Even after that, we had to formally request that the matter should be treated as a crime. If we hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be here today. We are very grateful to the Service Prosecuting Authority for finally taking this case to court and for securing this outcome for Jaysley.
But the justice system shouldn’t work like this – whether civilian or military. It shouldn’t depend upon a grieving family pressing at every stage for investigations that should have been conducted right at the start when Jaysley first reported what had happened to her. Like so many women, Jaysley simply was not believed and everything else flowed from that. Those failures cost her her life. Until the culture changes, service personnel will continue to be failed.”
Emma Norton, solicitor for the family said:
“It’s an enormous relief that the man that assaulted Jaysley has pleaded guilty. At least the family doesn’t now have to go through a trial on top of everything else. But what a difference it would have made if the Army (by which I mean Jaysley’s chain of command) had just listened to Jaysley when she told them about the assault the morning it happened and reported it to the police – instead of trying to persuade her that it wasn’t that serious, and to think about the impact on her assailant’s career and family. What an outrageous, unconscionable thing to have done and what awful consequences it has had. The family is still waiting for answers to questions that were put to the Army after the inquest about what if anything is being done to address those shocking wider failings”.
The timeline of events is as follows:
2018 Jaysley joined the Army aged 16.
12-13/07/21 Jaysley (then aged 19) is sexually assaulted while on exercise at Thorney Island by the Battery Sergeant Major, WO2 Michael Webber. Jaysley reported this the next morning to her captain, who urged her to think about the impact of making a formal report on Webber, and suggested she was making up the allegation because she was not enjoying being on exercise. The Coroner made the following findings about how Capt (now Maj) Hook dealt with this: “1) Major Hook did not initiate any investigations into Jaysley’s allegations (2) Made assumptions as to Jaysley’s veracity without any factual basis for doing so (3) Put pressure on her to drop her allegations (4) Only reported the matter to higher command when it became apparent that Jaysley’s (other) line management had been involved in the pursuit of a complaint.”
13/07/21 Jaysley reported it up herself. It was passed to the Colonel, Col Samantha Shepherd who, instead of reporting the matter to the police, persuaded Jaysley to accept a letter of apology from Webber who was given a ‘minor administrative action’ interview, with no other consequences for him; and who shortly thereafter enjoyed a promotion to a ‘soldier-facing’ role. The Coroner found that “the failure of the Army to deal with her complaint arising from the actions of the BSM in a lawfully proper way more than minimally contributed to her death”.
September – November 2021 Jaysley is sent more than 4500 texts and voice-notes from her line manager, Bdr Ryan Mason, and experiences extreme harassment from him over three months. She did not report this. The Coroner found that Jaysley had, as a result of the way in which the Army dealt with her report about Webber, “lost faith in her ability to complain effectively to the extent that she did not complain of the harassment that she was receiving from the Bombardier.”
15/12/21 Jaysley died.
04/10/23 Service Inquiry report into the death is published (leads to no proceedings being instituted, whether criminal or disciplinary).
10-21/02/25 Jaysley’s inquest. The Coroner heard evidence that Jaysley had told her mother that Webber had made a pass at her, tried to touch her between her legs, and told her friend that she had repeatedly tried to push him away and he had pinned her down. She was so afraid she locked herself in her car overnight in case he came to find her in the Army accommodation. She was dissuaded from reporting to the police, which was against Army policy. She was then subjected to extreme sexual harassment by her line manager, a bombardier. The Coroner concluded that the Army’s failings in the handling of the sexual assault more than minimally contributed to Jaysley’s death.
24/02/25 Jaysley’s family ask Wiltshire Police to consider criminal proceedings.
10/06/25 Wiltshire police investigate and pass the file to the Service Prosecuting Authority (SPA).
06/08/25 The SPA confirms it will charge Webber with the offence of sexual assault.
05/09/25 Webber pleads guilty to sexual assault.
The Beck family have established a campaign called ‘Jaysley’s Voice’ which raises funds in aid of the CMJ.