Deaths at Deepcut army barracks

This lengthy legal contest compelled Surrey Police authorities to investigate further and created a pressure to reveal camp life and its organisation for recruits.

Over the course of several years the families of the trainees challenged the original investigations and began a sustained legal campaign to have the circumstances of the deaths publicly re-examined.

The British press also gathered further accounts from other recruit soldiers who had been at the barracks at the time the shootings occurred, uncovering a disturbing picture of abuse of trainees in the facility by elements among its training staff, and criticised the original investigations into the incidents for a lack of a forensic examination of evidence.

An investigation consequent to this finding, also by Surrey Police, identified a number of failures of the Army's duty of care at the barracks, leaving the opportunity and motive for suicide available.

The findings led to media and families' criticism of the army investigations of the deaths over record keeping, transparency and particularly maintenance of evidence and forensic material.

However, as my noble friend said in his supplementary question, a further review by a fully independent figure was announced by the Minister of State for the Armed Forces in the House of Commons.

[9] In December 2004 a military law QC, Nicholas Blake of Matrix Chambers, was commissioned by the Ministry of Defence to independently review the cases with the voluntary co-operation of involved parties.

[10] The Deaths at Deepcut Barracks, with their obscure circumstances, with questions being asked as to whether they were suicides or foul play by an unknown third party(ies), have drawn substantial coverage in the British media, both in Fleet Street's tabloid and broadsheet titles, and in television news programmes and documentaries.

[16] In January 2016, prior to the start of a new inquest into the death of Cheryl James, The Independent newspaper revealed a culture of bullying, sexual assaults and rape was claimed to be widespread at Deepcut barracks.

The documentary was referred to as 'shocking' and indeed during interviews with former recruits it described a 'malevolent culture' of bullying, violence, attempted suicide, rape, male-rape, threats of murder, and racism.

[27] On 18 July 2014, the High Court of Justice ordered a second inquest into the death of soldier Pte Cheryl James following a judicial review brought by her family.

Surrey Police was criticised for its handling of the case, Mr. Justice Thornton stating that it had at first refused full disclosure of the reinvestigation report to Pte James's family.

Surrey Police subsequently handed over 44 lever arch files of documents pertaining to the case after being notified that an application for an Order for Disclosure was about to be made against it.

"[34] In May 2015, Private Eye reported: "Revelations last week that the ‘yellow’ fragment of bullet recovered from the body of teenager Cheryl James [...] did not appear to match the ‘red’ army issue ammunition raises serious questions about the botched investigations and inquiries over 20 years into the deaths".

Coroner Mr Barker QC postponed making what he described as the "difficult and unusual" step of ordering an exhumation but rejected the suggestion from Surrey police to delay the inquest and hold it alongside those of the other Deepcut recruits.

[36] At the September 2015 pre-inquest hearing, the Coroner's Court in Woking was informed that Pte James’ body had been exhumed the previous month and that a post-mortem examination had been carried out by two pathologists, during which metallic fragments were recovered for ballistic analysis.

[45][46] Benton’s sister, Tracy Lewis, told the Coroner that shortly before he died he had complained of being pushed out of a window at the barracks, as well as being “shackled and forced to parade around a canteen”.

[47] One witness recalled Sean Benton, who was from Hastings in East Sussex, being punched, lying helpless on the ground, facing verbal abuse and being "humiliated", her statement showed.

In one excerpt read out at Woking Coroner's Court, the witness said Pte Benton was punched in the stomach by Cpl Martin Holder, falling to the ground.

The family asked Surrey Police to open a criminal investigation because of multiple examples of testimony given during the inquest that described bullying and violence at the Deepcut facility.

Surrey Police opened a criminal investigations into the circumstances which led to the death of Sean Benton who was allegedly kicked and punched by an instructor 'days before his suicide'.

[55] Following the Coroner's verdict, Brigadier Christopher Coles, Head of Army Personnel Services, apologised to the Benton family and accepted that there had been a failure to give Pte.

John Cooper QC representing Geoff Gray's family told the hearing the main issue was "simply, who pulled the trigger".

At the start of the second inquest the Ministry of Defence denied claims that key internal reports cataloguing life at Deepcut Barracks would not be submitted as evidence.

The letter, which was apparently written by someone with detailed knowledge of previous inquests into the deaths of recruits at Deepcut, stated: “It has been made clear that other source documents detailing the situation in 2001-03 are not to be part of the new evidence regarding the Gray statement for the upcoming inquest, and that the statement structure as set out for Benton is to be maintained.” The letter further stated that the British Army intended to withhold from the new inquest material in its possession contemporaneous with Gray's death that showed that its senior command echelon responsible for the external supervision of the Princess Royal Barracks, Deepcut, had been repeatedly notified that it was in a state of disciplinary disorder, but had failed to correct the situation.

Gray's family afterwards stated to the press that they were dissatisfied with the verdict which they found illogical, that they had been denied recourse to a jury hearing, and that the court's conclusion had been partly arrived at using unsupported assumptions, and that there were thousands of pages of evidential material on the case created by Surrey Police's investigations that had been unexamined by the second inquest and not made public because of legal restraints.

Gray's mother stated that she wanted a full public inquiry into the circumstances of the serial recruit deaths at Deepcut Barracks between 1995-2002.

They further stated that they supported calls from the other families for a public enquiry into the condition of Deepcut Barracks in the 1995-2002 period, requesting that it should examine why it took the serial violent deaths of four recruits before the authorities admitted that there was something seriously wrong at the facility.

[64] In June 2021, it was revealed that a fifth recruit, Pte Anthony Bartlett, had died at the barracks in July 2001 from an overdose of prescription painkillers; the BBC reported that "a former detective who investigated the later deaths at Deepcut [retired Det Ch Insp Colin Sutton] said it was 'staggering' he was not told about it".

[65] The series of deaths at the Princess Royal Barracks, Deepcut, were used as the basis for a theatrical production entitled Deep Cut (2008) by Philip Ralph, which premiered at the Edinburgh Festival, followed by a run at the Tricycle Theatre in London.