Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck, 19, was subjected to ‘disgusting comments’ from male soldiers before she was found dead at Larkhill Camp in Wiltshire in December 2021, an inquest into her death has heard
A teenage female army recruit found dead in her room was subjected to ‘disgusting comments’ from male soldiers, an inquest heard.
Royal Artillery Gunner Jaysley Beck, 19, died at Larkhill Camp in Wiltshire in December 2021. Salisbury Coroner’s Court heard Gunner Beck had previously been sent thousands of messages from her supervisor and was allegedly pinned down by a senior soldier who tried to kiss her.
She complained and the senior soldier was asked to write her an apology letter, the inquest heard. Five months later, she was found hanged in her room at the camp.
Brigadier Melissa Emmett, head of the army personnel services group, apologised for how she was treated and told the court: “We let her down in so man ways. We should have done more.”
Gunner Beck’s friend Tamzin Hort, 23, told the hearing she would lock her door in her block over concerns male soldiers would walk in when she was sleeping.
She said she “couldn’t walk out of her block without getting nasty comments” from male colleagues and that Gunner Beck also received “disgusting comments”.
Tamzin, who has now left the army, said: “She would get a lot of comments. She was stunning. They would all make disgusting comments like ‘I would do this to her’.
“She was beautiful, she was going to get comments, but she shouldn’t have had to. You can’t react to it because it makes it worse and they would do it even more.”
You could be walking to the kitchen and they would be like ‘come to my room’, you would say ‘I don’t want to do that’ and they would say ‘you’re disgusting’.”
Asked about her own experiences, she added: “If you’re told enough times that you are a slag, that affects you. It makes you feel very low. I put on weight due to my relationship and things going wrong. I would go to work every morning and I would get called fat by my training instructor. He would say ‘look at you, you are fat, are you pregnant?’. You are just sat there humiliated.”
Tamzin told the court that when she was just 17, she returned home from the pub and locked her room, later finding a sergeant outside with a condom.
She added: “You can imagine how scared I was. It happens to every female. It is not just in 47 Regiment.”
Tamzin said she did not complain about the incident and said that on an occasion when she received therapy through the Army welfare services, “somehow everyone knew about it”.
The inquest also heard how Battery Sergeant Major Michael Webber, now of Warrant Officer Class 1 rank, attempted to kiss Gunner Beck after a barbecue.
The hearing continues.
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