“I look upon what they did to me as a sexual assault, almost to the point of torture” 🔴 PatrickStrud reports:
Mike Sansom was just 16 when he signed up for the Royal Air Force. “I had these visions of travelling the world and doing a 22-year service like the rest of my family,” he says. Mike hoped to find fulfilment, a purpose and maybe some excitement. But that was not what happened.
Mike isn’t the only person from that time to come forward today. One of the officers involved in the Special Investigation Branch ,, reveals the full array of covert and co-coercive procedures that she and her colleagues were required to carry out – and how, in the end, she became investigated herself.
A recording of his interrogation still exists. In crackling audio, the voice of a senior officer can be heard on the tape demanding to know the most intimate details of his sex life, asking over and over again for the specifics – for a protracted confession.“It’s a pornographic video,” Mike replies.“Can you tell me why you’ve got it?”“What do you mean ‘oral sex’?” the officer continues.“Using the mouth for what?” On the tape you can hear Mike reply, describing, but this still wasn’t enough.
If the intention was to psychologically harm Mike, it succeeded. “I tried to commit suicide after my questioning,” he says. “I had a complete mental breakdown.” “There was one officer there who had really got it in for me. And whenever he was on duty, I was terrified of what was going to happen,” he says. “There were instances where I was made to clean the toilet with my toothbrush, and then forced to clean my teeth. I had my head held down the loo with the toilet then flushed. It wasn’t a sanctioned punishment. It was his own punishment.”
Two things saved him. “Had I not met my partner in ’99 I think now I would be dead,” he says. The other was the support group Rank Outsiders, which had sprung up to help LGBT service personnel who’d been forced out. They would become instrumental in fighting to get the ban overturned, but they also established a helpline that became inundated with calls from those affected by it.
These leads could then trigger raids by the SIB, in which 10 to 20 investigators would pile into a 4-tonne trucked and descend on the barracks. She describes the effect – people sobbing and breaking down. “You’d see them totally wrecked as people. Totally broken. They’d not only been punished and lost their jobs but made to feel less than human – as deviant and unnatural.”
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