Courts Martial

(asked on 28th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many cases of (a) murder (b) manslaughter (c) rape and (d) sexual assault were tried through Courts Martial in each of the last five years; and how many convictions were made.


Answered by
Johnny Mercer Portrait
Johnny Mercer
Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Minister for Veterans' Affairs)
This question was answered on 3rd February 2021

The requested information is provided in the following table:

Charges Heard

Found Guilty

Offence

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

Murder *includes attempted murder

0

0

1*

1*

0

0

0

1

0

0

Manslaughter

0

0

3

1

1

0

0

0

1

1

s.1 Rape

31

23

49

10

15

3

2

2

3

3

s.2 Assault by penetration

9

11

4

6

9

5

4

1

0

2

s.3 Sexual Assault

40

30

53

45

57

21

19

16

11

17

Notes:

1. Section 1 (s.1) Sexual Offences Act 2003 (SOA 03) - Rape

2. s.2 SOA 03 - Assault by penetration

3. s.3 SOA 03 - Sexual Assault

4. The term 'Sexual Assault' has been considered to include both s.2 and s.3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003

5. These figures are for the number of charges heard at Court Martial

6. A defendant may have been charged with more than one count of each offence, or with multiple offences; the number of charges and verdicts may therefore be greater than the number of defendants in any year.

7. Some cases may have been discontinued, and in these cases, the number of guilty / not guilty verdicts may not add up to the number of charges heard.

Court Martial results from the military court centres over the period January 2010 to December 2019 can be found at the following website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/court-martial-results-from-the-military-court-centres. Information from 2020 will be published in due course.

Reticulating Splines