Bernie has been described by lots of people as a kind and generous man, a big, friendly giant who would always try and help others and who absolutely adored his children. He joined up when he was just aged 18 years old and in total he served in the British Army for 12 years.
He died in his single living accommodation at Catterick in January 2020. Nobody noticed he was missing from work and he was left in his room for three weeks. It remains astonishing and appalling that no-one in the Army noticed he was missing. The Army has rightly accepted that there were serious failings that enabled this to happen and has said sorry for them.
That failure to look for Bernie has had terrible consequences. Because Bernie was left for so long it has not been possible for the Coroner to determine a cause of death. That is extremely disappointing and very hard for his family to come to terms with today.
However, his then wife Beth has sat in court and listened to and read all the evidence for herself. Beth is able to come to her own view, knowing Bernie, about what happened to him. Bernie told his wife that he was being bullied and his friends and colleagues attended court to give evidence about that – one soldier described the way Bernie was spoken to as ‘degrading’ and another said that his friend’s treatment had been ‘despicable’. We now know that five junior soldiers and two senior Non Commissioned Officers had informed the Chain of Command that Bernie was being treated badly. Today the Coroner found as a fact that Bernie was subjected to treatment and was spoken to in a manner that caused him distress. The Army accepted that these allegations were not investigated properly.
Bernie had also been badly assaulted by some other soldiers the year before and, after he died, a soldier was sent to prison for a year for that offence, which had badly affected Bernie, who received no victim support. It is worth remembering that no substantive action was taken to progress that investigation until after Bernie died. After he died, the Service Prosecuting Authority decided to drop the case and it was only because Beth exercised a ‘victim’s right of review’ on Bernie’s behalf that it went ahead at all.
At times Bernie was intensely unhappy and expressing thoughts of suicide. He had tried to end his life once before in 2016. This information should have been passed on and shared when he moved units in the Army but it was not. Bernie had also hurt himself before, with pills, on at least two prior occasions. The coroner heard evidence that Bernie had in 2017 tried to buy illegal drugs over the internet for the purposes of ending his life. After he died, one of the few things that could be gleaned from his postmortem examination was the presence of amobarbital, a drug that cannot be prescribed legally in the UK. In the November before he died, Bernie disclosed that he had felt like harming himself regularly in the previous two weeks. He was signed off work for two weeks and told he was not allowed to have access to weapons, indicating a clear concern that he might be a risk to himself, but no-one in his Chain of Command was aware of this. A medical expert gave evidence to the inquest that Bernie was vulnerable and at risk of suicide in late 2019 and that the risk assessment undertaken of him by the Army’s medical services had been inadequate. The way in which he was discharged from mental health services just two months before he died and after a single consultation with a psychiatric nurse was described by that expert as ‘entirely unacceptable’. There was evidence that Bernie could ‘catastrophise’ about events around him. The last person to speak to Bernie in the early hours on 2 January 2020 described him as distressed, crying and drunk and said that during this call, he spoke of bullying, of not having had his assault taken seriously and of feeling he had no support.
Bernie was supposed to be checked on over the Christmas period while he was staying alone in his Army accommodation – astonishingly one of the men Bernie had accused of mistreating him was assigned to do those checks and he admitted at this inquest that he did not perform a single one of them. For that failure, he was ordered to perform an ‘extra duty’ as punishment.
Bernie’s situation was undoubtedly complex. There was a difficult personal and family background that is an important part of the picture of his life and it is important to recognise that. It is also important to acknowledge the Coroner’s findings today that there was evidence heard at the inquest that Bernie was looking forward to the future and feeling positive because he was moving away from the unit where he was so unhappy. The family also note that there were individuals in his workplace who were very kind and supportive to Bernie and they want to acknowledge those people in particular today and thank them for their help and friendship to Bernie.
For the family there will always remain unanswered questions and today’s open verdict is an enormous disappointment. Beth Mongan’s view is that Bernie took his own life and that he was very badly let down by the Army – an institution to which he had committed so many years of his life. Beth said:
‘I believe that Bernie took his own life while in crisis. He had been badly assaulted the year before and little to no action taken to address that, and he said that had been bullied and I believe him. I also believe the mental health care he received in the weeks before he died was deeply inadequate. The Army has thankfully accepted lots of the failings identified after Bernie died – but the fact that he was left alone in his room for 3 weeks, in this day and age, with no-one noticing he was not at work, remains a source of enormous distress to the family and it means our children may never get answers. All I can do is hope that the multiple lessons we have been assured have been learned by this case mean another family will never have to go through this.’
Emma Norton, solicitor for the family, said:
‘Because of the Army’s failure to find Bernie for some weeks after he died, the Coroner has been understandably very constrained in what he has been able to find today. However, Bernie’s wife has heard all the evidence in court, and is firmly of the view that he took his own life. Bernie’s very difficult experiences in the Army are, she believes, a vital part of the picture. The Army has rightly accepted and apologised for its multiple failings in this case. The family believe that Bernie was vulnerable, isolated and mistreated by his immediate Chain of Command and that much more could and should have been done to help him.’
A news item from November 2024 about mental health care and sudden deaths at Catterick Garrison, including a report about the violent assault Bernie suffered in 2018, can be accessed, here.
Beth Mongan was represented by Emma Norton, Director of the Centre for Military Justice and Nigel Edwards KC of Lamb Building chambers.