LONDON: A former British Army senior officer was sentenced to six months in prison on Friday for sexually assaulting a young woman soldier who later died by suicide.
Jaysley Beck, 19, had complained to superiors in July 2021 that Michael Webber, then a battery sergeant major, had sexually assaulted her.
Webber, now 43, later wrote Beck an apology letter, but her complaint was not taken forward or reported to police.
Royal Artillery Gunner Beck was found hanged in her room at the army camp in December 2021. The British army apologized earlier this year after a coroner condemned its handling of the complaint.
The army’s failure to take sufficient action made a “more than minimal” contribution to Beck’s death, an inquest into her death concluded this year.
The inquest was also told that Beck had been subjected to intense harassment from a different superior in the months between the incident and her death.
“Your career continued completely unaffected and you were in due course promoted,” Judge Alan Large told Webber, handing down the sentence at a military court in southern England.
Webber will spend half his sentence in custody — so three months — and be placed on the sex offenders’ register for seven years, the judge said.
“Today’s sentencing does not diminish the profound loss felt by her family, friends and the wider community, but it does represent an important step on the journey to justice,” veterans minister Louise Sandher-Jones said in a statement Friday.
A spokesperson told reporters after the sentencing that the army was “profoundly sorry for the failings.”
But Beck’s mother, Leighann McCready, said the army statement was “empty words,” and that “no sentence will be enough” to compensate for the loss of her daughter, according to the BBC.
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