Abuse Survivors Blog

Sexual offences committed in the context of the military have reached public awareness before: we remember the death of four trainees at Deepcut barracks, and the case of military police trainee, Anne-Marie Ellement, who was found hanged in 2011 after claiming she had been raped by two army colleagues in 2009.

My experience of representing such victims in civil compensation claims against the Ministry of Defence is that they suffer unspeakable shame and often lifelong damage.

When considering an amendment to the Armed Forces Act 2006 last year, Liberal Democrat peer, Baroness Jolly, expressed the belief that men and women who serve in the armed forces deserve the same level of protection as civilians. She said, "sexual assault is a gross violation which can have serious, long lasting consequences on victims, and unfortunately the military has failed to acknowledge the seriousness of this crime until now".

For many the term ‘institutional abuse’ can conjure up images of huge Dickensian establishments, like Haut de la Garenne in Jersey, where unspeakable crimes were carried out on orphan children by the very people who were entrusted with their care.  

But institutional abuse can also be much ‘closer to home,’ in that it is simply the mistreatment of children or vulnerable adults by any system of power.

In this blog post we explore common causes and examples of institutional abuse and offer advice on first steps for survivors seeking justice and compensation

Why institutional abuse occurs