Records of sacked gay veterans destroyed by UK’s Ministry of Defence
Records of Armed Forces personnel who were dismissed for being gay have been destroyed by the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), BBC news reported.
It comes after veterans who asked for documents relating to investigations into them by the military police were told they had been deleted in 2010.
The department stated the action was taken as it had a legal duty to make sure the details were removed from service records.
Jean Macdonald, who was dismissed as a lance corporal in the Women’s Royal Army Corps in 1981 for being gay, was among those requesting her data from the MoD before being it had been deleted after an order from the “Defence Police Chiefs’ Council”. “All of a sudden you’ve lost your whole career, you’ve lost your friends, you’ve lost your accommodation, you know, your whole way of life – it’s just full of shame,” she told the BBC.
