Jaysley Beck: Male officer ‘pinned down and kissed tragic soldier’

A female Royal Artillery soldier found dead in her barracks told friends a senior male officer ‘pinned her down’ and tried to kiss her in a terrifying attack, an inquest has heard.

Gunner Jaysley Beck, 19, died at Larkhill Camp, Wiltshire, in December 2019 after suffering an ‘intense’ campaign of physical and mental abuse by multiple men.

She had reported the physical attack but Warrant Officer Michael Webber only received a ‘minor sanction’, which convinced her there was no point reporting any abuse.

Her ordeal also included a ‘psychotic and possessive’ corporal, Bombardier Ryan Mason, who sent her thousands of text messages and convinced her he had hacked her phone and was stalking her.

The shocking case has highlighted concerns around the Army’s failure to protect women, many of whom suffer from abuse in silence. In 2021, a report found two-thirds of women in the armed forces had experienced bullying, harassment or discrimination.

Yesterday Lance Bombardier Kirsty Davis, who was a gunner at the time and trained with Gunner Beck, said her friend had called her 20 times in the early hours after the attack by WO Webber at Thorney Island, Hampshire, in July 2019.

She told the hearing Gunner Beck said that ‘he was trying to kiss her and she was trying to push him away. He was pinning her down’.

She had also texted saying he was ‘grabbing the back of [her] neck for a kiss’ and it went on ‘all night’. Gunner Beck did not want to end the call to Lance Bombardier Davis as she was so scared. She then slept in her car to hide from him.

The court heard WO Webber ‘forced himself on her’ and ‘tried to put his hands between her legs’.

He had written her a letter of apology after she reported him. She then accepted the apology and decided she did not want to take matters further. Lance Bombardier Davies said in her statement to military police: ‘Jaysley wasn’t happy with what had happened. But if you are in the Army and a lower rank, no one will believe you – especially against a higher rank’.

The Army Service Inquiry report, published in 2023, described the last months of Gunner Beck’s life as ‘an intense period of unwelcome behaviour’. It added that how she was treated by men in authority over her was ‘almost certainly a causal factor’ in her death.

Gunner Beck had no diagnosed mental health conditions and had not sought welfare support from anyone in the Army.

The hearing continues.