6.8.2026
Britain’s largest military training college for teenagers is under scrutiny after four former female recruits alleged they were raped, sexually assaulted and harassed during their training. According to the BBC, the women, who attended the Army Foundation College (AFC) in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, over the past five years, said the incidents took place when they were 17 years old.
Speaking publicly for the first time, they revealed a culture of misogyny, sexual harassment and abuse that shattered their ambitions of serving in the Army.
AFC is the largest military training establishment for under-19s in the UK and it receives all the Army’s 16-year-old recruits.
“They started taking my clothes off, and then this led to them doing stuff I didn’t consent to. There were a lot of them. They touched me in places, made inappropriate comments, calling me a thing rather than a girl. And then I was raped… by multiple junior soldiers, same age as me. It went on for hours. I felt like a piece of meat,” one of the victims narrated.
North Yorkshire Police told the BBC in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request it had received 16 reports of sexual offences linked to the college in the year to June, including allegations of exposure, voyeurism and sexual assault.
No information was included on whether the reports had led to prosecutions.
A total of 176 complaints of inappropriate sexual behaviour at the college were made between January 2018 and June 2025, according to Ministry of Defence (MoD) data.
