[Benjamin]

A black female soldier who fronted British Army recruitment campaigns has spoken for the first time about how years of racist abuse and bullying made her life whilst serving “a living hell”.

Kerry-Ann Knight, 33, took her case to an employment tribunal and accepted a substantial settlement from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) last month.

​​She says when her complaints weren’t taken seriously she began secretly recording conversations - including one where laughter could be heard after a white male soldier said “just [expletive] tar and feather her, it’s what they used to do in the old days”.

Mrs Knight and the MoD settled before a final judgement was made, after the Army agreed to making a public apology.

It said it “accepts that Mrs Knight had to work in an unacceptable organisational environment where she experienced racist and sexist harassment”.

However, the MoD said this week it had settled the claim with no admission of liability.

Mrs Knight, who grew up in Nottingham, served in the Army for more than a decade and left as a corporal earlier this year - after having launched an official service complaint about the racist and sexist incidents she says she endured.

She sat down with the BBC to talk about the realities of being a black woman in the British Army and said that despite initially having been “excited” to join, she would no longer recommend it.

“I’d never encourage any woman, especially of colour, to join, because it’s not going to benefit your life in the long run.”

The racist and sexist abuse began early in her army career in 2012, says Mrs Knight.

She says she had to serve alongside soldiers who claimed to support the far-right groups - the Ku Klux Klan, Britain First and English Defence League.
Mrs Knight also told the BBC:

During one of her first postings, to Germany, she was told to avoid a certain corridor because soldiers were openly displaying swastikas, Confederate flags and other symbols associated with the far right.

Male soldiers would shout out racially offensive insults - followed by “I'd still shag you though”.

She was reprimanded by a senior female soldier during training for the way she wore her hair in braids to go swimming. “This isn't the ghetto,” she was told.

A senior colleague physically assaulted her in 2013 - motivated, she believes, by racism.

Things would come to a head in 2021, when Mrs Knight began working as the only black female instructor at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate. The Army trains its 16- and 17-year-old junior soldiers there.

She says several of her fellow white male instructors made it apparent from the start that she wasn’t welcome. “They just thought they were superior to me, and they were going to make my life a living hell.”

The hostility began with what some in the Army might wish to dismiss as “banter”.

Boxes and dirty crockery would be piled high on her desk, she says, and people would shout out “watermelon” as “their signal that a black person was approaching the office”.

Django Unchained - a film about a slave - was played loudly in the office, she says.

“It was their way of making me feel unwelcome because they’d repeat the most racist lines, and then chuckle.”

Some soldiers at Harrogate would question her professional qualifications, says Mrs Knight.

When she offered to make a round of hot drinks she says one colleague replied saying he would like his coffee to be “black and bitter - like my women”.

Images of Hitler and a photo of a man’s genitals were openly posted on a Whatsapp group for the instructors - of which she was a member.

Then, in November 2021 at a dinner in the officers’ mess, Mrs Knight says a fellow instructor aggressively shouted abuse in her face.

She says she had raised concerns about racist and sexist incidents earlier in her career, but this time she decided to launch an official service complaint - which can investigate issues of bullying, harassment, discrimination and biased, improper or dishonest behaviour.

It was from this moment that she also began to secretly record some of the conversations taking place behind her back.

In one of the audio files, she says the men “spoke about lynching me”.

She cried during her interview with the BBC and says she couldn't have got through it all without the help of colleagues who had been willing to speak up in support of her.

Despite everything, Kerry-Ann Knight told us she had wanted to help the Army change - and had willingly taken part in a number of recruitment campaigns, including being the “poster girl” for one in 2019 aimed at millennials.

“I wanted more individuals of colour to join, because I just thought, the Army cannot continue like this - it really can’t”, she says.

She knew women and ethnic minorities were under-represented groups and says she was selected to front campaigns because of this. Women make up 11.7% of the UK's armed forces and ethnic minorities 11.2%.

But, when the 2019 campaign went public, there was a backlash, which was was reported at the time, external.

British soldiers accused her online of “playing the race card” and of being just “a tick in the diversity box”.

The Army Foundation College in Harrogate, where Knight worked until leaving her job, has been the focus of several investigations into bullying and sexual offences. North Yorkshire Police looked into 13 separate sexual offences there last year.

One of the college instructors she complained about was later discharged from the Army for having had sex with a 16-year-old female junior soldier.

Mrs Knight says she also witnessed bullying and racist insults aimed at junior soldiers at the site. She says she spoke out, which only made her life more difficult.

The Army claims it has a zero tolerance policy of unacceptable behaviours. But Kerry-Ann Knight believes the complaint process is primarily designed to protect the organisation and “is not fit for purpose”.

The Army closed ranks, she says, and tried to “paint her out as an aggressive black woman”.

Mrs Knight took her case to an employment tribunal in June and - at first - the Army publicly contested her case. But after hearing evidence for seven days, it backed down.

During the tribunal the former soldier was “put through days of very nasty cross-examination”, according to her lawyer, Emma Norton from the Centre for Military Justice.

“It is all dreadfully familiar and shows that, in the British Army, it’s worse to accuse someone of racism than it is to be racist,” she said.

Mrs Knight’s case was also supported by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and its chairwoman, Baroness Kishwer Falkner says the former corporal is “an inspiration to young soldiers”.

“It is such a shame that the Army has lost a talent like hers.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c84jzex9vk8o

[Glenn.]

Disgusting

[Oliver_W]

No-one should be tokenised like that.

[Cherie]

Grim but not shocked, women and girls are becoming second class citizens

[Livia]

My late husband's two best mates in the army, people I'm still in touch with, were from Barbados and Nevis. Career soldiers. You can't judge the whole army by this. If course, they were male...

[Ammi]

…that’s a difficult read, isn’t it…horrendous sexism and horrendous racism and I’m glad she’s getting to tell her story…

[Maru]

What the f

[Ammi]

…thoughts of National Service being talked about recently for young people as well…and (some) soldiers openly supporting far-right groups …the Ku Klux Klan, Britain First and English Defence League….

[Beso]

Awww was the big tough soldiers feelings hurt by a little bit of team banter..

[GoldHeart]

I've just read it all

Grim AF !

[Benjamin]

Originally Posted by parmnion

Awww was the big tough soldiers feelings hurt by a little bit of team banter..

Doesn’t sound like banter to me.

[Glenn.]

Originally Posted by parmnion

Awww was the big tough soldiers feelings hurt by a little bit of team banter..

Homophobic, racist enabler and victim blaming. You get better and better

[Beso]

Originally Posted by Glenn.

Homophobic, racist enabler and victim blaming. You get better and better

10 years.

[Maru]

Originally Posted by parmnion

Awww was the big tough soldiers feelings hurt by a little bit of team banter..

If someone spoke to me the way as it was being described in the OP, it's banter that would be over very quickly. These comments are embarrassing enough having read it here and I can only imagine how dumb it sounded in person. Should they have said this with any amount of seriousness to the wrong party, even as a joke, they would've received nothing but the most humiliating blowback. The fact she didn't try to lynch them herself is the biggest shock to me.

[Livia]

Have we heard from any other black women in the army? No.

[Glenn.]

Originally Posted by Livia

Have we heard from any other black women in the army? No.

Miss “women are under attack” right here ladies and gentleman.

[The Slim Reaper]

Originally Posted by Glenn.

Miss “women are under attack” right here ladies and gentleman.

That's the kind of female solidarity that warms the cockles

[Livia]

Originally Posted by Glenn.

Miss “women are under attack” right here ladies and gentleman.

We've heard from one black female. ONE. A bit of balance would be appropriate I feel. I think that's a reasonable request and shouldn't lead to one of the board's greatest misogynists taking the piss.

[Mystic Mock]

Well she was smart to audio record their behaviour.

They can't hide behind "she's a liar" card.

[GoldHeart]

Originally Posted by Mystic Mock

Well she was smart to audio record their behaviour.

They can't hide behind "she's a liar" card.

Exactly
These days you have to , not only as evidence but to protect yourself as well.

[joeysteele]

Originally Posted by Mystic Mock

Well she was smart to audio record their behaviour.

They can't hide behind "she's a liar" card.

No they can't Mock.

[Niamh.]

Disgusting, I'm glad she won her case at least and got a bit of closure on it.

[Livia]

I do agree her treatment was disgusting. It's just that my Dad was a career soldier as was my late husband. I've known lots of black soldiers, male and female, so I wonder what it was about this particular soldier that made her the poster girl for the army? Did that contribute to how she was treated? Also, she was a corporal so she wasn't a new recruit. Was her experience always the same? I'm sure this is not the norm for black soldiers in the British Army.

[GoldHeart]

Originally Posted by Livia

I do agree her treatment was disgusting. It's just that my Dad was a career soldier as was my late husband. I've known lots of black soldiers, male and female, so I wonder what it was about this particular soldier that made her the poster girl for the army? Did that contribute to how she was treated? Also, she was a corporal so she wasn't a new recruit. Was her experience always the same? I'm sure this is not the norm for black soldiers in the British Army.

Who knows what the ' particular' was ,you could also argue why doesn't rape and bullying & attacks in general.... happen to every soldier?, but it still happens aswell . People will talk about their own experiences, and thankfully not everyone goes through this
disgusting vile treatment.

[Livia]

Originally Posted by GoldHeart

Who knows what the ' particular' was ,you could also argue why doesn't rape and bullying & attacks in general.... happen to every soldier?, but it still happens aswell . People will talk about their own experiences, and thankfully not everyone goes through this
disgusting vile treatment.

She was stationed at a training centre, probably the worst place to have bullies of any description. I would wondered why this particular female was singled out for abuse in this particular place. She can't have been the only black soldier to have been stationed or trained there. There's a hierarchy in The army, did she approach her CO? What did her CO do, if anything? The abuse sounds horrific but strange she was the only one to come forward. I was in no way diminishing her experience, so why you're here to state the obvious is quite beyond me.