What happens to women who complain of sexual harassment: ‘You’re branded a troublemaker’
Imagine being 20 years old and stuck on a remote mountainside thousands of miles from home. Now imagine being the only woman working among dozens of men and being subjected to a sexually degrading, humiliating experience. Imagine making a complaint and being told it’s best just to drop it; that, otherwise, you might struggle to get a job elsewhere.
That was the choice Rebecca Crookshank faced as a young RAF officer stationed in the Falklands in 2001, if choice is the word. She had worried in advance about being posted to the Mount Alice remote radar base: “I remember hearing stories from other girls who had been, hearing about this ritualistic behaviour and feeling very vulnerable; feeling I didn’t want to go up there, making that known, being kind of accused of being a troublemaker – suck it up, you need to go up there.” Men mooned her on arrival; an initiation ceremony followed, involving being manhandled by several naked men. When she complained to a superior officer, the interview took place in her bedroom and she recalls being told she would get a good report if she kept quiet. “I think I said in the meeting: ‘I’m going to leave,’ and they said: ‘Well, your civilian life will be affected if you take this further.’ I was really terrified of all of it, of the power of this institution and the weight of the loyalty and heritage. My father was a serviceman, my grandfather too. What would they say?” So she simply stuck out the four-week posting and
