THERE is an underbelly of sexual abuse in this society. It happens in schools, coaching environments, the church — you name it. The armed forces, too, are a playground for sadistic abusers.

Two-thirds of women in the army have experienced bullying, harassment or sexual abuse during their time in the forces, and 10 per cent of female child recruits are now sexually assaulted by their colleagues. According to anecdotal evidence, those proportions are similar for boys.

It’s the dirty little secret that everybody in those institutions knows about. Of course, they don’t want to admit it, so lawsuits take place behind the scenes, compensation deals are made, and the public never hears about it.

With over two million veterans in Britain today, we are talking about hundreds of thousands who have been bullied, brutalised, tortured and sexually assaulted. The perpetrators could be lauded, they could be on the battlefield, and yet they could be brutalising us at the same time. And they were.

My childhood was not easy. There was abuse in the home, and then in my early teens, I was groomed and sexually abused by a paedophile. Deviants and predators will know how to find those vulnerable children and young adults. They seek them out.

At age 17, I joined the army. That’s when the violence and abuse entered a whole new sphere.

Some of the training instructors liked to think they had the power of life and death over you. One of my first training instructors told me, “I don’t do this on purpose, but I can’t stop myself bullying and hurting recruits.” As far as I know, nothing was done. It doesn’t bear thinking about how many beatings he took part in.

There are so many whose lives have been ruined. A few months before I started training, one young man had told one of the training instructors he was gay. This was in 1983-4, and homosexuality in the army was still illegal. This instructor set a gang of blokes on him and put him in A&E.

It’s only now that I realise I actually went into the army with PTSD. I was an excellent sportsman, but PTSD can incapacitate you without warning. The body and mind stop working in unison, it becomes hard to concentrate and tasks get harder and harder to perform. Sometimes, it feels like your brain has just stopped working, you glaze over.

All that is exacerbated by the stresses of army life — especially when you’re getting hardly any sleep for days at a time — and when it happens, you’re looked upon as weak and stupid. And once you’ve got that tag you’re done for.

For a start, there is the psychological warfare. Defecating in your bed, ignoring you at mealtimes. You’re in a regiment of 500 to 1,000 people, but you spend your life in isolation. Yet you’re infamous — everybody knows you.

Several times in training, people who’d never met me used to come looking for me, asking me, “Are you Fessey? We’re gonna have a fight.” Sometimes, if I was tired, I’d just sit there and let them kick the crap out of me.

I once woke up to someone beating the living hell out of me, shouting that he was going to kill me. I fought back, and they wanted to charge me with assault. I still see his face every day.

There are no words to describe the level of violence we endured. One night in around 1986-7, while I was on my plant operator’s course, I came back to the camp drunk as a skunk. I was sat on the stairs outside and woke everyone up with my singing.

A former comrade came out in his boxers telling me what he would do to me if I didn’t stop, but I just laughed and carried on. He kept hitting me, again and again, maybe 20 or 30 punches, until my nose started coming away from my face.

The blood just flowed out like a tap. I remember it like it was yesterday. People can die from that kind of beating. After that I went Awol for 15 to 20 days, resulting in a spell in military prison, and getting kicked off the training course I was on.

I stayed in the army for four years. During that time, I was subjected to over 50 physical attacks and was sexually assaulted three times.

Despite everything, after the army, I did well. My work became my passion. I got my qualifications and became a recognised endurance athlete, and then ended up employed by the NHS, where I spent nine years working in cardiac rehab. I got some calm for a time, but in the final years, with the effects of the illnesses, everything began to snowball.

I have been diagnosed with PTSD, complex PTSD, and multiple personality disorders. The complex PTSD and personality disorders have been certified as having been caused by service.
The PTSD has now also been confirmed as caused by service, awaiting certification.

It’s all in writing from the MoD, confirmed by the Secretary of State. Complex PTSD is caused by a constant barrage of brutality and torture — emotional, physical and sexual — from which there is no escape. That was what happened to me in the army. And for that, I get a disability war pension of £352 per month.

Complex PTSD gets worse over time if the right support or treatment is not put in place. You think you’ll find satisfaction and closure, but you don’t. It takes pieces out of you for the whole of your life.

You don’t “survive” it, you just exist; every year that passes, I feel less and less human. The police are no help in a crisis; they use it as an excuse to attack you. I have been assaulted by the police five times in recent years.

Veterans commit suicide at the rate of almost one per day in this country. All of us who have been through the kind of abuse I have are potential suicides — anything could tip us over. I once tried to hack off my right arm in a frenzied attack on myself. I wanted to look like how I felt, to feel the pain and bleed out.

When the police and ambulance arrived, they said it was a scene from a horror movie. They put me in handcuffs, with my right arm half hanging off. The nurse told me if I had cut by another millimetre or two I’d have lost my arm.

Sometimes I imagine going somewhere public, wrapping myself in barbed wire and petrol and setting myself alight. To show this country what it’s done to me, so they can’t ignore it anymore.

Every single step you take with the MoD is a fight. When you go for your war pension, they discredit you. They discredit the diagnosis, the research, and the evidence. They trash your character. I believe it’s a conscious strategy, to herd us towards suicide.

There’s a myth around army life. You’re fed this romance as a child growing up — in uniform, travelling the world, fighting wars. But they don’t tell you about what happens after that.

Too many end up like me. There’s not enough help and support. Decades later, if you’re still alive, you might get your compensation and pension. But many don’t make it. And for the survivors, things slowly deteriorate.

I served, protected and fought for this country, and in return, this country sexually abused, brutalised and tortured me.

My training instructor completed his training instructors course in 1983 and went into the training regiment the following year. That would normally be a minimum three-year contract. Yet in October 1985, he was discharged from the army. All we were told was, “The dirty fucker has been discharged.”

Decades later, in the 2020s, Hampshire Police travelled to Yorkshire to question him about allegations of sexual assault made by former recruits. No further action was taken.

My abuser got away with it because the recruit who reported it was bribed with the prospect of a great career if he didn’t go to the police. And I have to go to sleep knowing that that vile piece of work has never had to face up to any of what he has done to us.

The only way things will change is if we talk about it. Childhood sexual abuse is an uncomfortable topic, but we can’t keep brushing it under the carpet and hoping it will go away. That only perpetuates it.

We need to acknowledge it, admit it goes on, and keep it in the public eye. Then hopefully other people will come out and say, this happened to me as well. That’s the only way things will change. And they need to change. Our lives need to be better. We deserve more.