Inside British Army’s child training college where violent abuse is the norm

Posted: 6th August 2026

Inside British Army’s child training college where violent abuse is the norm

An 11-month investigation reveals culture of violence, criminality and sexual abuse at army training centre for teens

By Sian Norris • 6 Aug 2026 View in browser

Widespread bullying and violence reported at the army training college | James Battershill

Good morning, Sian here. Today’s BBC News investigation into sexual abuse at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate – where 16-year-olds train for the British Army – reveals the scale of sexual abuse against teenage girl recruits.

It follows our investigation from last year, where I revealed the scale of physical, emotional and sexual violence at the AFC. I uncovered terrifying levels of bullying and violence, including dozens of complaints against college staff.

And yet, despite the constant stream of bad news coming from AFC, Ofsted rates the college as “outstanding” for welfare. The education inspectorate has a bespoke contract with the Ministry of Defence, which means it does not have to grade the AFC on the same criteria as a mainstream school.

Ultimately, both the BBC’s story today, and our investigation from last year, reveal how vulnerable young people are being let down by an institution that has a duty to protect them. Because these kids may be called soldiers. But they are children.

Sian Norris – Senior Reporter, UK Investigations

The British Army is the only military in Europe that still recruits 16-year-olds.

That’s how old Hamish* was when he joined last year. As is required of all 16- and 17-year-old sign-ups, who are legally still children but are given the titles of ‘junior soldiers’, he moved into the residential Army Foundation College Harrogate in the north of England to begin his military training.

“In the first couple of weeks, it’s brilliant,” he said of his early days in the army, explaining that most teenage recruits “see it as a brilliant way of earning money”, particularly “if you haven’t really got any GCSEs”.

“But then things start to break down,” he said. Hamish soon witnessed boys being repeatedly punched in the head during fights with their peers or whipped with belts during initiation rituals, as well as other physical violence, including extreme bullying. Junior members of staff, he said, told the teenage recruits they did not need to know about such incidents, even encouraging them to physically “fight it out”.

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Hamish is far from alone in his experiences at AFC Harrogate. An exclusive investigation by openDemocracy and the Children Rights International Network (CRIN) has revealed the shocking extent of the bullying, harassment, self-harm, sexual offences and safeguarding failures that teenagers who join the British Army are subject to.

Over the past 11 months, we have submitted dozens of Freedom of Information requests, worked with peers in the House of Lords to ask parliamentary questions, reviewed publicly available documents and data, as well as video footage of instances of violence at AFC Harrogate, and spoken to sources and experts to uncover the reality of life at the college. Our investigation found that between 1 January 2018 and September 2025:

The Ministry of Defence recorded 474 complaints of physical violence against junior soldiers at AFC Harrogate – an average of 62 a year
Staff members were the alleged perpetrators in 41 of these incidents
There were 176 complaints of “sexual allegations”, more than 30 of which were against college staff
The MoD recorded 214 complaints of bullying at the college
The college recorded an average of 20 incidents of self-harm every year
North Yorkshire Police recorded 24 crimes at the college in the first six months of 2025 alone, including five sexual offences

openDemocracy shared the number of allegations of physical violence with a teacher who spent more than a decade working in a mainstream school with a sixth form in England, where the pupils are the same age as those at AFC Harrogate, to ask if this was a normal rate. A school receiving such a high number of complaints in any given year, she said, “would be fucking nuts”.