Army needs #MeToo moment says retired lieutenant colonel
The British Army needs a ‘#MeToo’ moment, a retired colonel publishing a new book about sexism in the forces has said.
Lieutenant Colonel Diane Allen has described certain members of the armed forces as “feral packs” who can’t be controlled.
Private online forums were inundated with anecdotes from female officers detailing their experiences of sexism shortly after the scandal surrounding the convicted Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein broke in 2017, Lt Col Allen said.
"It was an outpouring of everything that had happened in their careers. It was the full spectrum [of complaints].
"It galvanised me. It made me realise that there is a story that does need to be told," the retired officer had told Sky News.
"That evening I sat there for four hours. I was riveted. I was reading every post coming in," she added.
Lt Col Allen, 55, claimed drunken male soldiers attempted to break down her bedroom door one night in the 1990s - and that her superiors passed her over for promotion because of her gender.
"It is not the whole military that is the problem," she said.
"It is the feral packs that we can't control and we don't actually deal with those groups, so when it does go wrong, it can go very wrong."
She said it is now time for the army to have a #MeToo moment “just to acknowledge what happened and move on; move on to where we are today and accept this is part of our history.”
Lt Col Allen who received an OBE in recognition for her work as a reservist in the Intelligence Corps is publishing a book documenting her career in the army which she began in 1983. She resigned in February.
The book describes the culture within the military as rife with sexism and which is overseen by a “toxic cohort of senior, misogynistic, white, middle-class males".
An annual armed forces survey published this month revealed that 12 per cent of all service personnel say they have suffered from bullying, discrimination or harassment in the past year.
Of those, 90 per cent chose not to make a formal complaint - primarily because they did not believe anything would be done and feared it might adversely affect their career.
Last July, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) pledged a "range of new measures" to tackle what it described as "inappropriate behaviour" in the military, following the publication of an official review into sexual offences, bullying and other wrongdoing.
