Jaysley Beck’s mum says young women should not join Army

The mother of a young soldier who committed suicide after being sexually assaulted by a superior officer has said young women should not join the army.

Leighann McCready said the armed forces were still not doing enough to protect recruits after her daughter Jaysley Beck was found dead in her barracks at Larkhill Camp in Wiltshire in 2021.

Midshipman Michael Webber, 43, cornered Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck and tried to kiss him in July 2021. He was jailed on Friday for sexual assault.

His mother told BBC Radio 4’s Today program: “The evidence showed through our own daughter that the protection was not there.”

“Until the policies are properly changed, I would not recommend anyone join the Army because they are protecting themselves, not the soldiers, and that is what happened to our daughter Jaysley,” he said.

“New recruits to the military are at a very vulnerable age and when they first join as women they are joining a minority surrounded by a large number of men.”

The army said it did not listen to Gunner Beck, originally from Oxen Park in Cumbria, when he reported the attack and apologized for its handling of his complaint.

Comments come the next day Webber was sentenced to six months in prison He was arrested by a military court after admitting to sexually assaulting Gunner Beck.

Marksman Beck was found dead in his barracks five months after the attack.

Webber, then Sergeant Major, made a sexual advance towards her after drinking one evening while she was on duty for a training exercise.

Gunner Beck claims Webber previously said he was “waiting for a moment for them to be alone” He grabs her leg and pins her to the ground and tries to kiss her..

Despite her superiors’ attempts to persuade her not to do so, she filed a complaint against Webber following the incident.

The incident was not reported to the police and Webber wrote a letter of apology to Gunner Beck. He was later promoted.

The investigation into the death of Gunner Beck later concluded that the incident and The army did not take the necessary precautions contributed “more than minimally” to his death.

Ms McCready said the fight against the military was “relentless” and demanded “real changes” rather than “empty promises and glorified promises”.

Emma Norton, the family’s attorney and director of the Military Justice Center, said that while there have been some improvements in the Army’s complaint-handling process, they don’t go far enough.

Since Gunner Beck’s death, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) has established a serious crime command and launched a working group on violence against women and girls, and more recently agreed in principle that serious complaints should be handled by individual services.

Ms Norton told Today: “I think they are not having the impact that the Ministry of Defense would have hoped.

“That doesn’t mean there isn’t a sustained commitment to improving these things, but we still see very serious complaints against military policing.”

Ms McCready added that she was still “inundated” with stories from soldiers and their families saying “this is still happening” and urging her to “keep fighting”.

Last week Wiltshire Police also announced it had identified “offending spanning several decades” as part of an investigation into allegations of sexual assault during Army medical examinations between the 1970s and 2016.

Ms Norton called for the new independent Armed Forces Commissioner to be given responsibility for dealing with serious complaints and called on the military to do more to improve conviction rates for sexual offences.

Following Webber’s conviction, the Army said it launched a significant cultural reform program to give service personnel “the confidence they need to report sexual crimes and inappropriate behavior.”

Maj. Gen. Jon Swift, deputy chief of staff, said the Army “regrets that we did not listen to Jaysley when he first reported his attack.”

“We are determined to ensure that the same mistakes do not happen again.”

Defense minister Louise Sandher-Jones said the Army acknowledged the shortcomings identified in the service investigation but said “there is still more work to be done”.

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