More than 100 male and female Army recruits have alleged that they or others were subjected to physical, sexual and psychological abuse while serving at Deepcut training camp, the scene of four unexplained suicides.The allegations, contained in a leaked police report, are in stark contrast to claims by the Ministry of Defence that there was no culture of abuse at the base in Surrey.The claims by serving and former soldiers include eight allegations of rape, 12 of indecent assault and 61 of assault. In total, 130 alleged incidents were catalogued by officers investigating the suicides, most of them involving NCOs and all but a handful at Deepcut in Surrey.The list applied only to a brief period in the history of the Royal Logistic Corps training centre, covering the years of the suicides - 1995, 2001 and 2002.Geoffrey Gray, whose 17-year-old son, also called Geoffrey, was found dead at the base with two bullet wounds to the head, said : ‘‘We’ve been saying for an extremely long time that there was a culture of bullying at Deepcut but the Ministry of Defence always denied it. Now we know that culture was there, no matter what they say. It is horrifying to think my son was allowed to go there. We need a public inquiry.’’In one alleged incident, a female recruit went to the guardroom at the base to complain she had been raped, only to be told she was liable to be disciplined for visiting male accommodation. Another woman said her rape complaint was simply ignored. A number of female trainees said they had been assaulted while lying in bed, one of them claiming that she had been urinated upon by an officer. One woman described how she had been ordered to run around the parade ground naked except for a beret. NCOs appeared to be the main culprits. On one occasion a NCO was said to have ordered trainees out of their rooms in their underwear in the early hours before throwing darts at them. The MoD, however, refused to budge from its long-held position on Deepcut and rejected the allegations.
