UK under fire for recruiting an 'army of children'

... · May 28, 2014

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RyanT · May 28, 2014

I think it's one of those situations that must be totally shocking to to those overseas

but that we Brits, on the whole sadly take as 'normal'.

I was in the Army Cadets, between 12-16 and looking back that was a pretty brutal environment.

The vast majority of the adult instructors were either former solders or former cadets themselves,

therefore had no training on dealing with young people (usually from highly dysfunctional homes),

apart from that provided by the army.

Certainly in those 4 years I can't ever recall any sort of inspection/oversight from outside,

which you'd expect considering we'd be on totally isolated bases from 3 days to 2 weeks at a time,

so it was very much an 'insular culture', both in terms of the attitudes and just the surroundings.

Perhaps most disturbing however was the practice of giving kids as young of 13-14

masses of (almost unquestionable) authority over younger children.

Which was exasperated further by the notion that, 'shit rolls down hill',

'delegation of responsibility'

Thus more often than not it was the most immature/ inexperienced of the 'leadership group'

having direct power over the youngest and most vulnerable...Of course this lead to abuse.

.......Which is exactly the situation in the regular army.

18-21 year old Lance corporals 'playing god' with young recruits.

So while the Army's obviously 'dismissed the concerns as "nonsense", with crap like,

'at least we're not sending them off to war' they're totally missing the point.

Just have to look at what happened at Deepcut,

4 young trainees dead in apparent suicides by gunshot on night patrol,

Sean Benton, 20

Cheryl James, 18

Geoff Gray, 17

James Collinson,17

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