A coroner has urged the Ministry of Defence to review its welfare policies for vulnerable service personnel after finding a soldier killed herself because of bullying, despair at her workload and the long-term effects of an alleged rape.
Monday's ruling was welcomed by the sisters of Corporal Anne-Marie Ellement, of the military police, who hanged herself at Bulford barracks near Salisbury in October 2011, three days after her 30th birthday. The army immediately apologised to the family, saying it hoped to learn lessons from the tragedy.
Deputy coroner Nicholas Rheinberg said Ellement was "deeply and permanently affected" by the alleged rape by two soldiers in 2009 and felt betrayed when the army subsequently took no action over it. This was among several factors in her eventual suicide, he ruled.
The rape allegation had been a catalyst for harassment and bullying, Rheinberg told the inquest in Salisbury, saying senior officers had erred by keeping Ellement in the same barracks accommodation in Germany as the girlfriend of one of the alleged attackers, who became an apparent ringleader for abuse, calling Ellement a "slag, skank and liar".
Ellement was placed on a suicide risk register while in Germany, but this warning was not passed on to officers when she was transferred to Bulford, an omission the coroner called "unforgivably bad".
Rheinberg also noted a punishing pattern of long shifts and a workload that saw Ellement often deal with files late at night and at weekends. This, coupled with her worries about her leadership role, amounted to "work-related despair", he said, and also contributed to the suicide. He identified a third factor: the very recent break-up of a brief relationship with another soldier.
The coroner said he would write to the armed forces minister, Mark Francois, recommending the MoD review its welfare policies for dealing with soldiers who say they have been sexually assaulted, and to urge better training over suicide prevention protocols. He said some of Ellement's care was of high quality and any criticism was levelled at systems, not individuals.
Ellement's elder sisters, Sharon Hardy and Khristina Swain, who had pushed for this second inquest into her death, with a wider scope of inquiry, said they were pleased at the outcome. "Anne-Marie was treated appallingly and let down by the army," said Hardy, reading a brief, handwritten statement to reporters outside the coroners court.
"She was never able to recover from the allegation of rape she made in Germany. She then suffered bullying by the army and was subjected to unacceptable work practices. Victims of sexual violence in the army need proper support, which the coroner has recognised, and we are delighted with his recommendations."
In a statement released by the MoD, Brigadier John Donnelly, head of personnel for the army, said it "deeply regrets" Ellement's death and apologised to the family for errors. He said: "We now have a clear understanding of the complex circumstances surrounding her death and where the army needs to learn lessons. Our priority is to study the coroner's conclusions and then identify what further steps can be taken to help prevent a recurrence of this kind of tragedy in the future."
Rheinberg's summing-up stressed that while it was not his role to decide on whether or not Ellement was raped, the subsequent treatment she faced was bullying. He said: "I find that deliberate action was taken to make Anne-Marie's final days in Germany difficult, and this did amount to harassment.
Ellement had been bullied as a child and had low self-esteem and intermittent depression, for which she was placed on medication while in Germany, the inquest heard. She also had difficulties with her fitness and weight, in part due to a knee injury, the coroner said, and was mocked by some colleagues as "Anne-Marie Elephant".
Rheinburg criticised Ellement's immediate superior officer at Bulford, Staff Sergeant Julian Clark, for a Facebook posting earlier in 2011. There is no record of it but the coroner said he believed witnesses who remembered it expressed frustration at poor work by subordinates in a way that clearly identified Ellement as a target of criticism, something she felt keenly. "Although not imbued with evil intent the posting amounted to bullying," the coroner said.
The ruling was delayed for a week following the discovery by the MoD of discs containing 1,400 previously unseen documents after the evidence had concluded, prompting Ellement's sisters to say they feared a cover-up. Among the documents was an inventory of Ellement's personal effects, which listed several phones and a diary the family said they had not seen. It emerged on Monday that these had been passed to Ellement's father, with whom the sisters are not in contact, and her mother.
The inquest heard sometimes difficult evidence from Ellement's former colleagues. One, Corporal Charlotte Berrill, said Ellement felt bullied by other soldiers in Germany, who accused her of "crying rape".
Hardy told the court that when she heard her sister was dead her immediate thought was that this had happened because of "the army, the rape, the bullying and the overwork".
