Exclusive: Senior civil servants make serious allegations, including sexual assault, harassment and abuse, in leaked letter
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Sixty senior women at the UK’s Ministry of Defence have described a “hostile” and “toxic” culture at the department in a letter that alleges sexual assault, harassment and abuse by male colleagues.
The letter, seen by the Guardian, was sent last month by a large group of senior civil servants to the MoD’s permanent secretary alongside anonymised testimonies in which women described their personal experiences.
A woman who said she was groped at an MoD social function but was advised against complaining.
A woman on an overseas posting who said she was “touched repeatedly on the lower back and legs by a senior military officer” but the “perpetrator went unpunished”.
The claim that a group of military officers kept an “Excel spreadsheet that rated women” based on “their looks and what they thought they’d be like in bed”.
A woman who said that before an evening event, a “defence senior” asked a woman “whether anal sex was an appropriate topic for his speech”.
An account of how a military officer “propositioned” a woman “late at night in a corridor” on an overseas military base.
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