Anne and Jane* were just 10 years old when they say they were sexually abused by a member of staff connected to their British Army-run school in Bünde, West Germany.
Now in their 50s, the women recall that he had “immense power, the run of the school”. That power, they said, gave him licence to remove girls from lessons to carry out his assaults.
“He used to knock on the door and say, ‘I need her to help me,’” Jane recalled. “I'd sit there absolutely frozen, looking at the teacher, thinking, please, please, don't say yes. And she'd say, no problem. And off I'd go...”
Jane described being “terrified” during a serious assault on school grounds while her fellow pupils were in class. “I couldn’t do anything,” she said. “I started crying.”
Now, an investigation by openDemocracy and the Guardian has revealed that the alleged abuser, a UK national and former soldier still residing in Germany, has benefited from a legal loophole that has allowed him to avoid justice, having never been interviewed by police or arrested.
Anne and Jane reported their “soul-destroying” sexual abuse 40 years after it took place. In July, the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Special Crimes Unit closed its investigation because it could not prove the MoD had jurisdiction over the man, now in his 80s.
If the suspect did not pay tax in the UK due to his employment status, MoD officers say they would lack the jurisdiction to charge him – despite the allegations that he used his connection to a British Army school to befriend, groom and assault girls on a British Army base. They say no records exist showing whether or not this was the case.
The women told openDemocracy and the Guardian that the police investigation was “flawed and feeble”.
“This feels like a travesty of justice,” Anne said. “It became very clear that [the police] did not know they did not have jurisdiction. They had surmised it and, for me, that wasn't good enough.” She added: “I am very aware that the army has marked their own homework and that feels complex.”
Sian Norris
NATO rules state that countries with armed forces abroad can apply their laws to people who fall under their jurisdiction, including serving members of the military and civilian employees.
But the absence of the man’s employment contract, along with no proof that he paid UK tax, meant the police could not prove he was employed on an MoD London contract, rather than a local contract. The result, Anne and Jane say, is a “disastrous” decision where the MoD has jurisdiction over some employees, and not others.
While local forces can investigate where the MoD does not have jurisdiction, German law has a time limit for investigating historic sex abuse allegations, which for Anne and Jane expired in 2020. They turned to the military police, only to be failed – just as they had been as children.
“The MoD had a duty of care to us,” Jane said. “They were our caregivers and they were our education-givers. There was nowhere else we could be apart from that school, and in that school was a paedophile.
“It's simply wrong, and the fact that I was British, he was British, Anne's British, we were in Germany on British soil, sovereign soil, in a British military school run by the MoD and they had hired a British man and he sexually abused us,” she added. “Those issues are useless, worthless, and don't allocate accountability.”
The alleged abuse took place in the 1980s, but the women say it continues to affect them daily.
“I'm a car crash, basically,” Jane said. “He was my first sexual encounter at the age of 10. I struggled with relationships at an early age… I've never ever been able to be in a loving relationship.”
Anne also says she has been left traumatised, suffering “a spiral of self-destruction” from a young age. “It destroyed my life,” she said. “100% destroyed my life.”
Both believe they will not be the only survivors of sexual abuse in military schools. “It was the Wild West from my perspective in that school,” Anne said. “There was no safeguarding.”
The Centre for Military Justice’s Emma Norton similarly warned that “given the number of overseas military schools, there is a serious risk this gap is likely to affect other victims too.
“To be told after so long and after having taken the incredibly brave step of reporting the abuse, that nothing now can be done because they appear to have fallen into a ‘jurisdictional gap’ is devastating,” she added.
Responding to our findings, Labour MP Jess Phillips said the case “exposes a cultural issue within the MoD”.
“The MoD needs to treat these two women as people who have been wrongfully treated while under their care. That wrongful treatment is the responsibility of the state. The actions of ‘computer says no’ does not suggest an organisation that wants to make change.”
Phillips urged the military not to “continue the cultural failing of the past”, saying: “We can make the future better.”
A pattern of offending
Anne and Jane felt they never quite fitted in on the Bünde base, a now-closed British military site that was, at its peak during the Cold War, home to roughly 1,000 personnel and their families. It was, said Jane, “a little England”.
“We found ourselves quite ostracised and isolated,” said Jane. “And then the grooming started.”
The alleged abuser, they said, “paid us a lot of attention. He made us feel special.”
As he befriended the girls, Jane described how he would “single us out to do special things around the school”. He took them out of lessons, and, “because he had this huge personality, he had the run of the school; whatever he said, you did”.
“That’s when everything changed,” said Anne. “And then it was just a catastrophe until I was sent to my next school.”
She described it as a nightmare she could not wake up from. “You lose childhood at that moment,” she said. “You have that stolen from you.”
The two women say the man abused them through inappropriate touching, sexual assault, and sexual assault by penetration. Fear became the defining emotion of their lives. The alleged abuser threatened that if they told anyone, their fathers would lose their jobs. “He terrorised us,” said Jane.
Although some offences took place outside of school, “the majority of the sexual abuse was on the school grounds of the British Army school,” Jane confirmed. “I would say perhaps 95% of the abuse was within the school or on the school grounds.”
A long road to injustice
In 2018, Anne reported what had happened to her as a schoolgirl to the Truth Project – an initiative encouraging survivors to share their experiences in tandem with the UK’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. She consented to her report being referred to the authorities, but an error meant it was passed onto the Royal Military Police only in 2021.
The police told Anne they needed to establish jurisdiction, and “when they told me three months later that they were going ahead, I assumed that meant they had it,” Anne said. But the RMP said they would need a second victim to proceed, so she told them about Jane, who she had lost touch with as a teenager.
It was another two years before the police showed up at Jane’s parents’ house to ask for her address. Their visit was a blunder that threw Jane into a “sheer panic”, forcing her to disclose to her family the abuse she had kept hidden for four decades.
This was one of many police failures. Documents seen by openDemocracy and the Guardian show the police interviewed only one witness outside of Anne and Jane’s families – a school staff member who referred to the alleged abuser as a “lovable rogue”. They also failed to examine important archive materials.
In June 2024, the police closed the investigation. “We were absolutely devastated,” said Anne. “We couldn’t make sense of it.”
The pair filed a complaint and received a written apology from a senior officer. “The handling of your case fell below the professional standards you had every right to expect,” they said.
The Defence Serious Crimes Unit, founded in December 2022 to deal with severe sexual offences in the wake of multiple abuse scandals in the British Army, re-opened the investigation. The decision, said Jane, meant “we had hope again."
Although the unit had evidence of his presence in the school, as well as witness accounts and photographs, it lacked tax records and employment contracts. It closed the case in July 2026, saying it was unable to prove jurisdiction as the alleged abuser had no UK tax records. “We asked if he definitely paid tax to the German authorities, and they didn't know,” Anne said.
The suspect was never interviewed. Instead, the Defence Serious Crimes Unit relied on evidence from a staff member at the German Enabling Office – an MoD body that supports the army’s work in the country – who said she believed the man would have been on a local contract. The police did not find a copy of his contract.
“So those two little bits of information, after four years and seven months, led them to shut the case,” said Anne. “So what do we do now?” We were told: Nothing. That's it. It is the end of the road for you. I asked the senior officer: what would you do if it was your daughter sitting here? He had no answer.”
A Defence Serious Crime Command spokesperson said: “Every child has the right to be safe at school, and our thoughts remain with the victims. We deeply regret that the initial handling of the case fell below the standards we expect and have formally apologised to the victims. A new investigation launched earlier this year concluded the Defence Serious Crime Command does not have jurisdiction to pursue charges.
“We have taken a number of steps to strengthen investigative practices across Defence and remain committed to ensuring every case is fully and thoroughly investigated to deliver justice for victims.”
Anne and Jane’s remaining hope is that speaking out will mean victims abused in army schools and denied justice will “have a voice, because at the moment the MoD is hiding from all accountability,” said Anne. “When you're abused as a child, it's all behind closed doors, and you're told to keep quiet. That's how people get away with bad things. The MoD is mirroring that behaviour right now.
“I want the MoD to feel shame that they allowed him into the school in the first place, and they allowed him to get away with it.”
The women have cross-party support, with both their MPs – one Labour, one Conservative – expressing concern about their treatment. openDemocracy is not naming the MPs, to protect the women's anonymity.
Jane’s MP described the women’s experience as “deeply troubling”, saying “it cannot be right that allegations of such depravity are allowed to disappear into loopholes about jurisdiction and a lack of accountability.”
“These two women have shown remarkable courage and tenacity in the search for justice,” said Anne’s MP. “Whatever the complexities about jurisdictions and the passage of time, it is essential that any possible avenues are pursued.”
While there is now no likelihood of a third police investigation, both women continue to fight for an acknowledgement of, and accountability for, how they were failed as children.
But they are pessimistic about anyone being held to account. “Hope feels like a very stupid act for me right now,” said Anne.
“As a 10-year-old girl I was controlled and powerless, and when they closed the case, I felt powerless and controlled again,” said Jane. “It was the MoD who continued that feeling that you are not worth fighting for here. That is perpetuating this endless ‘no.’
“We'd never have met him if we hadn't been forced to go to that British military school,” she added. “The whole thing comes back to who should take responsibility for this perpetrator, who he was accountable to, because the MoD, who employed him, wanted to wash their hands of it and claim it was nothing to do with them.”
*Names have been changed
If you believe you were also a victim or have a similar story you wish to tell, please contact Sian Norris at sian.norris@opendemocracy.net. We will protect your anonymity.
