The Ministry of Defence has spent more than £8m compensating survivors of historic child sex abuse committed by military personnel or on military bases since 2017, openDemocracy can reveal.
A Freedom of Information request submitted by this website revealed that 155 civil claims have been successfully brought against the MoD for non-recent child sex offences in the past eight years.
On average, each claim led to a survivor receiving a taxpayer-funded payout of £52,000.
Solicitor-advocate Ahmed Al-Nahhas from Bolt Burdon Kemp law firm in London, which specialises in representing injured service personnel, said openDemocracy’s findings paint “a stark and worrying picture” for the British military.
“Behind each of these cases is a person and a life that may have unravelled as a result of abuse,” Al-Nahhas said.
“We should bear in mind that the MoD will not pay out compensation unless there was a finding of fault or there was a real risk that a court would find it liable for the acts of its personnel,” he added. “In these types of cases, this will often include the failure to take reasonable steps to protect the welfare of children and/or vet people in positions of authority.”
Our data reveals that the MoD paid out £16,000 in 2017, increasing to a high of £2.5m in 2023. In 2019, the government launched the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse and the Truth Project to give survivors of sexual abuse at public institutions a platform to tell their stories and share them with the relevant police force if they wish.
openDemocracy has spent much of the past year lifting the lid on sexual abuse within the British military. We have revealed that a quarter of cases heard in military courts since 2018 relate to sexual offences, that only 22% of rapes heard in military courts result in a guilty verdict, that hundreds of men have been abused while serving, and that the MoD is failing to enforce its ban on troops paying vulnerable women for sex while stationed overseas.
Responding to our latest findings, Andrew Lord, a partner at human rights law firm Leigh Day, said: “We know that abuse of children occurs in all walks of life, but it is nevertheless shocking to see the true scale of complaints being brought against the Ministry of Defence.”
Lord represents survivors of childhood abuse in compensation claims, including an ongoing matter against the Ministry of Defence, in which two children were allegedly abused while attending a British Army-run school. Earlier this month, the victims in that case accused the military police of a cover-up after openDemocracy unearthed a missing piece of evidence in the case, which the force failed to find.
He added: “Compensation claims against an institution are another important route to justice for survivors, and the bravery of those who brought each of the 155 claims should not be underestimated.”
Ongoing crimes against children
The compensation costs relate to civil claims for historic abuse, but openDemocracy has uncovered that many children are still being sexually abused by British military personnel.
We analysed court martial and service police data to reveal that at least 166 court martial cases that took place between January 2010 and June 2025 included at least one charge of a child sex offence.
In reality, far more service members were likely tried for child sexual offences during this time. Court martials for crimes such as rape or sexual assault do not record the age of the victim, meaning we were able only to look at offences that specifically include the word “child” or “children”.
These could include sexual communications with a child, possessing indecent images of a child, making and distributing images of child abuse, sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust, indecent assault of a child, and arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence.
There were, however, multiple occasions where a member of the armed forces was tried for rape or sexual assault alongside a specific child sex offence. This was the case for Jessica’s* abuser. Last year, we told how she was sexually abused at the age of seven by her 16-year-old babysitter, Martin Roberts, when both parties were living on the British Army base in Germany where their fathers were stationed.
As the dependent of a British Army member at the time of offending in the 1980s, Roberts (who went on to serve in the British armed forces himself) was subject to service law. In July 2024, he was found guilty at court martial of numerous offences against Jessica, including rape and multiple counts of indecency with a child, and sentenced to four years in prison.
Roberts was released after serving a year.
Since 2021, the Service Police have recorded 128 cases of sexual offences where the victim was under-18. Of these, 113 of the victims were serving personnel and 15 were civilians. Earlier data is unavailable, as previous to 2021, the youngest victim demographic was recorded as under-21.
An MoD spokesperson told openDemocracy: “Unacceptable and criminal behaviour has absolutely no place in our Armed Forces. The Defence Serious Crime Command assures all serving personnel that any reporting of a serious crime will be investigated independently from their chain of command and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
*Name changed to protect identity
