The Ministry of Defence has been accused of inadequately responding to complaints of sexual harassment after a female employee said she had experienced three separate sexual assaults working for the department.
The woman spoke out via the Prospect trade union after reading reports in November 2023 that 60 senior female officials had made allegations of sexual assault, harassment and abuse in the MoD in a letter to permanent secretary David Williams.
She told Prospect that she had experienced her first sexual assault a year after joining the MoD at a social work event, where a male colleague squeezed her breasts in front of other colleagues.
As reported by website Civil Service World, a further incident took place some years later, where at the married quarters of an MoD couple, she felt a man’s hand stroking her left thigh – at one point with his wife present in the room. A few weeks later, the same man attempted to ply her with alcohol.
In both cases, she asked for the behaviour to stop but the perpetrator repeated the action.
She raised the incidents with her line manager but little action was taken.
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In a third incident, a colleague offered to escort her to her hotel room when both were attending a conference. She told him not to, but he followed her anyway, entered the room and attempted to kiss her.
The female employee’s manager accepted her request her to limit her interaction with the man to online meetings, but she said she continued to feel intimidated by him.
The female employee made a formal complaint to MoD, but the defendant was not suspended during the investigation .
It is not publicly known whether further action was taken after the investigation.
Sue Ferns, senior deputy general secretary of Prospect, said: “That these assaults happened at all is shocking but for the MoD to so comprehensively fail to deal with the culprits, or take adequate measures to stop it happening again, is completely unacceptable.
“Abusive behaviour thrives in an atmosphere of permissiveness and cover up. It takes huge courage for women to come forward when these behaviours happen in a work-related setting, so when they do it is critical that their employer acts. The MoD needs to stop being part of the problem, start taking allegations of this nature seriously, and introduce a proper system to deal with bullying and sexual harassment.”
The woman at the heart of the fresh allegations told Prospect she hoped that making the details of her experience public would help prevent anything similar happening to someone else.
Prospect wrote to the MoD, on behalf of the joint trade unions, in September 2022 calling for a review of bullying, harassment, discrimination and victimisation policies and procedures, including provision on timelines for process completion.
The union said there had been “no meaningful engagement on these policies, and in fact the MoD have abolished the Personnel Policies Committee replacing it with a HR Forum, which has yet to acknowledge the joint trade unions’ request and engage.”
An MoD spokesperson said: “No woman should be made to feel unsafe in the Ministry of Defence and this behaviour is not tolerated. We are committed to stamping this out and we continue to encourage anyone who has experienced or witnessed this kind of inexcusable behaviour, to report it immediately.”
The department pointed out it had a bullying, harassment and discrimination helpline, which was available for all defence personnel.
In July 2022 the MoD announced new strategies to stamp out sexual harassment.
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