EXCLUSIVE: Female soldier who was raped by Army sergeant after late night party reveals how nightmare ordeal left her feeling suicidal and slams bosses for ‘never treating her as a victim’ after attack in her room

• EXCLUSIVE: Sgt Michael Ball’s victim says she was left suicidal after the attack

A woman soldier who was raped by an Army sergeant colleague after a late night party has told how she was left suicidal following her ordeal.

The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is now accusing the Army of failing to care for her properly in the aftermath of the attack in her room.

In an exclusive interview with MailOnline, she slammed a decision to free Sgt Michael Ball on bail to await sentencing after he was convicted of raping her last week.

The victim said that she had been left ‘fearing that he will look for me in the same way that he did on the day he raped me.’

Speaking alongside her mother, she described how she had been ‘let down’ from the moment she reported the rape, and was ‘never treated as a victim’.

A woman soldier who was raped by an Army sergeant colleague after a late night party has told how she was left suicidal following her ordeal

Sgt Michael Ball, 37, has been freed on bail to await sentencing after he was convicted of raping her last week

She claimed that mistakes in her case included a failure to properly ‘secure the crime scene’ after the attack at Dalton Barracks in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

Forensic officers found the room unlocked and temporarily unguarded when they arrived to gather possible evidence after she reported it.

It also emerged that Ball had barged his way into her room when a soldier was earlier standing guarding outside after he had heard hat she had reported him for rape, and demanded to know where she was.

In contrast, she said that Ball who had been decorated for service in Afghanistan was ‘offered more support due to his senior rank and standing within the Army’.

A Military Court heard last week how the married father-of-two attacked her after binge drinking all day and night at a mini festival party called ‘Camp Messtival’ in their barracks.

The court in Catterick, North Yorkshire, heard how Ball, spent all day and evening at the event in July last year which was a parody of the well known Camp Bestival.

He later went with two other party-goers to the junior officers’ mess, despite it being forbidden for him to be there due to his more senior rank.

The three of them went to the room of the victim who had not been drinking as she had been working until 3 am.

Ball was so drunk that he was sick in her room, leading to him being placed him in a room next door to ‘sleep it off’.

He repeatedly emerged and tried to get back into the ‘after party’ before being let in and supposedly falling asleep.

Ball raped the victim after the other guests left at 9am, despite her desperate attempts to fight him off.

He was found guilty of rape and sexual assault on Friday last week after a five day hearing, and wept as he was warned that he faced being jailed when sentenced at a later date.

Ball (pictured) committed the attack at Dalton Barracks in Abingdon, Oxfordshire

Ball was bailed so that he could get his ‘domestic affairs’ in order but was warned he faces a prison term when sentenced.

The victim told MailOnline how she reported the rape immediately to a senior officer before phoning her mother and partner in tears.

But she said she was then forced to wait in her room for hours for Military Police to arrive and begin their investigation.

The victim said: ‘I felt like I wasn’t even a victim. I waited from ten in the morning till gone 3pm for the Military Police to even arrive at my camp.

‘Then, they took me into a room to do a brief questioning. They wouldn’t let me urinate all day, and it was one of the hottest days in July.

‘So it was ten in the morning when I reported, and they told me not to shower or urinate. And by the time I got to the examination place, it was half seven at night.’

As the rape took place on a Sunday morning, no medical centre was open at her camp, so after much discussion, they had to take her to a civilian medical centre.

She added: ‘They said it could be an hour and a half away… they could take me there, but they could not drive me back to the camp.’

The victim claimed that Military Police did not have access to a rape kit, and officers ‘were not trained in appropriate forensic evidence-gathering techniques’.

She said: ‘I had to wait in my bedroom where it happened. And I mean, again, you’re sitting in a crime scene effectively.

‘But then the worst part was when we were driving to the intimate forensic examination. Military Police got a phone call from the forensics officers, asking “Why have you left the room unattended?” So they hadn’t even secured the room before taking me away.’

Once they were at the examination centre, a male officer in full uniform was tasked to take photographic evidence of her intimate injuries which she and her mother described as ‘totally inappropriate’.

The victim said she felt she was forced back to work by Army bosses within days of being raped by Ball.

She added: ‘So when I arrived back at work within one week, they sent me on an exercise to Salisbury Plain. I agreed to go on because it would get me off the camp premises.

‘When I was out there for three weeks, I didn’t really get much support at all, like how my mental health was going and how it was affecting me being back at work.

‘Then I was straight back onto the same old camp. Like I had never had a chance to try and recover.’

Ball was found guilty of rape and sexual assault on Friday last week after a five day hearing

The victim said she was simply moved to a new room in ‘a mixed block’ with an en-suite toilet at Dalton barracks after the attack.

She claimed that officers who were tasked to look after her would later be allowed to give character references for Ball in court.

Referring to her Victim Liaison Officer, she said: ‘One day she asked me, “Have you never had a sexual relationship with him”. I said: “No, never”. But when I think about her, it’s a very strange question that she’s asking me.’

On another occasion, she was told by a senior officer to ‘soldier on’ and put her mental health second to her military career.

The victim said she ‘had to fight’ to get posted to a new camp to try and escape memories of her ordeal, and was finally moved in May this year, and placed in a room without an en-suite toilet.

She said: ‘Eventually I moved, and when I arrived there, it was a mix of showers and toilets. So, I expressed my concerns that I didn’t want to share showers with males, and I didn’t want to share toilets with males.

‘They already had a background of what had happened to me through the welfare team. They didn’t do anything about this straight away.

‘It took them a month or so to then realise, after the effects of my going into hospitals and me voicing my opinion more, that I did not want to have mixed toilets.

‘So their outcome was, let’s just change the toilet sign to females and change the other side and down the corridor to males.’

READ MORE: Married Army Sergeant raped a colleague after getting drunk at barracks mini-festival called ‘Camp Messtival’

The victim said she was left fearing for her safety at her new accommodation and was so traumatised that she would have to ‘urinate in a bucket and on occasion even wet the bed’ because she was too afraid to leave her room.

She also claimed that a soldier charged with raping another female recruit had been moved to her accommodation block while waiting to stand trial.

The victim claimed that she only found about the soldier’s background when he was ‘convicted of raping a female soldier in Halifax, and he appeared in the press’.

She believes that the presence of the man in her block was another example of her being ‘placed at risk by the people who should have protected her’.

The victim said: ‘We were basically living with him, not knowing what had been going on. I did not know why he’d been removed or moved. He was convicted of rape in July this year.’

She insisted she was not given proper support when she told her military bosses of her crippling mental health problems and episodes of self-harm after her rape.

Rather than offering support, the Army threatened to have her ‘retired from military service on medical grounds’, which would have left her jobless and homeless.

The victim said: ‘The only time that they gave me some time off was for 28 days when I was in hospital after trying to commit suicide in March this year.

‘And then their response was basically, “You need to come back to work, or you can’t get moved to another camp because you’ll get medically downgraded, which means you have to stay here”.

She added: ‘In July, I took an overdose. And I was in the hospital only for the evening when my Mum contacted them about my safety plan.

‘Because my safety plan had kind of been thrown out the window. They said I could get discharged from the Army due to self-harm, even though I needed treatment.

‘They were Intolerant of self-harm in the Army; if you self-harm more than three times, you get discharged. It made me angry.

‘I have been diagnosed with PTSD, trauma and OCD thoughts. So far, it’s been quite a nightmare.

‘I need support to go through a system in the Army called DCMH. But I didn’t realise that the DC manager is going to affect my grading within the Army and what I can do and what I can’t do within the Army.’

In court, Ball wept as he was warned that he faced being jailed when sentenced at a later date

The victim told how Ball had been allowed to remain on full pay at his family home in Ormskirk, Lancashire, while waiting for his case to be heard.

She said she was left hurt when Judge Advocate Edward Legrand told the weeping NCO to compose himself as he wept after his conviction, and bailed him before sentencing

The victim said: ‘I didn’t get mentioned at all. I was just the complainant. It’s all about him and his welfare, his kids and looking after his house, getting his house in order.

‘The judge was treating him like he was the victim in a sense. He had gone through his evidence with cockiness and smirking throughout the week. He was just crying because he was annoyed. He’d been caught out.’

The victim added that she was acutely aware of the ‘low numbers of conviction rates’ for rapists, and hoped her case ‘would encourage others to come forward’.

Her mother who was in court for the trial, claimed she had been removed from the hearing at ‘one point’ as she tried to support her daughter.

She said: ‘The defence counsel went out of their way to remove me to destabilise her when she was in the middle of evidence.’

The mother added: ‘It took me nearly five hours to get to my daughter on the day she was raped, and I couldn’t even give her a hug because they still hadn’t carried out a forensic exam.

‘My daughter has changed beyond recognition. I am very proud of her for what she has achieved this week.

‘Before the rape, she was a confident and outgoing young woman. Since the rape, she has been unable to leave the house alone, and she believes he will come looking for her.

‘She’s had limited support. She’s learned not to trust anybody because she’s lost her career really.

‘I mean, when you think about it, what the Army said when she was self-harming, she was threatened with medical discharge.

‘As a parent, I’m just so proud. I’m like, really, really proud of her strength and courage. I’m just hoping that it, it opens all the doors for women or men to be able to speak out and know that justice can take place, because there’s just not enough justice for rape victims.

‘I think the fact that my daughter came forward so early in the day, that she reported it that day, and the evidence, just really supported that, and that’s what people need to learn to do.

‘As difficult as it is, they need to learn to come forward to safeguard that evidence. Without that, she knows she should probably struggle to get the verdict she got.

‘Before, she was really outgoing. She’d want about 100 photographs taken of a perfect photograph on a night out on her Instagram and Facebook and things like that. She used to run. She was so confident.

‘She went through an angry stage. And then she went through a depressive stage, and then she started self harm, and she’s trying to take her own life.

‘It’s just been so difficult. Now she’s crying and can’t even go out or to the car on her own from her home or anywhere.’

The ARmy said they were committed to ensure ‘victims of crime feel empowered and enabled to report offences’

An Army Spokesperson said: ‘We recognise the courage shown by the victim in coming forward to ensure this extremely serious crime could be investigated and taken to a successful conviction.

‘The Army is committed to ensuring that victims of crime feel empowered and enabled to report offences.

‘The standard of support provided to the victim in this case will be investigated and any shortcomings identified and addressed.’

A defence source added: ‘There is no place for sexual assault in the military. We are committed to stamping it out and supporting anybody impacted by this terrible behaviour.

‘At the same time, we welcome an increase in reporting as an indication of increased confidence in the offence reporting system.’

The source said that the MoD had launched a Defence Strategy on Tackling Sexual Offending in July 22 and had a policy of ‘zero tolerance’ towards sexual exploitation and abuse as well as unacceptable sexual behaviours.

They added: ‘Going forward, we aim to use relevant information about sexual offending in the Armed Forces to consider and develop targeted interventions and measures to try and tackle this type of offending.

‘The MoD has worked across the services to strengthen levers available to dismiss or discharge those who are found to have committed sexual offences or unacceptable sexual behaviour.

‘We are also working with the single services to develop new measures to ensure commanding officers who, when found by the Service Complaints Ombudsman to have fallen short of expected standards in handling service complaints, receive appropriate, consistent and robust consequences, that appear on their employment records.

‘We now ensure that there is female representation on all court martial boards including those related to sexual offending.’

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