Australian military personnel have been accused of using Facebook and Snapchat to send sexualised messages to female military personnel, including one instance where a soldier used an iPhone to take a picture of his exposed penis next to an officer’s head.

BuzzFeed News has obtained a dossier of documents under freedom of information law setting out the scale of alleged misconduct across Australia’s army, navy and air force. The documents disclose charge sheets for all military offences committed by personnel since January 2014.

The 500 pages of documents reveal damaging allegations about defence personnel that raise ongoing concerns about the culture within the defence forces.

Some of the documents also raise serious national security concerns, including allegations of email hacking and failures by cryptographic officers to dispose of classified material.

While a small number of the allegations against personnel revealed in the dossier have been publicly reported, many have never been disclosed.

The defence department permits journalists to attend defence court martial hearings – where their names are read in court – but does not publish when members are charged with offences, and refuses to disclose their names outside of the courtroom.

As a consequence, many serious allegations have not been reported before. A small number of charge sheets indicate the findings against the personnel, but in many cases it is not clear if the offences against them were proven.

The names of all members charged with offences have been suppressed. Defence official Nicola Viney justified this decision in part by writing that “retrospective publishing of names could impact negatively on the disciplinary process”.

An analysis of the materials by BuzzFeed News reveals that the use of social media and email to send abusive or sexualised messages on social media appears to be a growing phenomenon in Australia’s military.

Five navy members stationed to the HMAS Cerberus recruit school were charged in August 2017 with prejudicial conduct for allegedly sharing content relating to one or more female personnel in a closed Facebook message group. While the nature of the content is not depicted, the charge sheets state that the male members edited and uploaded material without the consent of the women. They were charged with five separate counts of prejudicial conduct.



Personnel in these types of cases are most commonly charged with the offence of “prejudicial conduct”. This is considered to be a “lesser offence” a person can be charged with by Australia’s military justice system. In many instances, members receive small financial penalties, or short periods in detention.

This is at odds with the Australian justice system for civilians, where the offence typically used to prosecute individuals who send inappropriate or abusive messages over Facebook or Snapchat for civilians is offending, menacing or harassing someone using a carriage service. The civilian offence carries a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment.