Wes Streeting has said he is “absolutely sickened” by allegations of rape and sexual abuse at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, as pressure grows for a full look at what went wrong. The Army college abuse claims have drawn fresh attention to the treatment of young female recruits at the North Yorkshire site, which trains the Army’s under-19s.
Four women told the BBC they were sexually assaulted and harassed while attending the college and said they encountered a culture of misogyny and sexual violence. Streeting said he would look closely at what had failed in Harrogate and also examine how culture change is handled across the armed forces and the wider defence system. He said he sympathised with women who had been badly failed and praised them for speaking out.
The Army said unacceptable and criminal behaviour has no place in its ranks and urged victims and witnesses to come forward. The remarks followed growing concern over the Army college abuse claims, which have now become a wider test of trust in military training and discipline.
The Army Foundation College is the biggest military training establishment for people under nineteen in the United Kingdom, and it receives all of the Army’s sixteen-year-old recruits. North Yorkshire Police told the BBC, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, that it had received sixteen reports of sexual offences linked to the college in the year to June. Those reports included allegations of exposure, voyeurism and sexual assault. The police did not say whether the reports led to prosecutions.
Ministry of Defence data shows 176 complaints of inappropriate sexual behaviour at the college between January 2018 and June 2025. The women who spoke out all attended AFC within the past five years, according to the account they gave. One woman, Tilly, said she was seventeen when she was raped there by several fellow soldiers after being invited into their room.
