Royal Navy instructor jailed after licking trainee sailor’s nipple
A Royal Navy instructor has been locked up for a year for sexually assaulting a trainee sailor and sending naked pictures on Grindr to another.
Leading Hand Davonne Bethel, 35, is facing ‘a very real prospect’ of deportation after he licked the nipple of a trainee during a drunken party.
Bulford Military Court heard from a number of victims affected by the instructor’s behaviour, which was described as ‘running a bulldozer’ through appropriate boundaries.
The assault took place during a celebratory dinner for the end of the recruits’ phase one training, where Bethel lifted the top of a male recruit and licked their nipple.
On a coach journey home from the party, he then bent over the same man’s lap and pretended he was giving him oral sex, before kissing a 17-year-old recruit.
Graham Coombes, prosecuting, said Bethel ‘bent over his lap, put a coat over his head and mimicked oral sex’.
The instructor then bragged about his exploits to a third trainee, messaging him to say he had ‘necked off with one lad on the bus’ and ‘was w****** another off’.
As a result, the man felt ‘on edge’ around him during training and said Bethel made him think he was an ‘easy target’.
The prosecutor added these incidents were an ‘abuse of the trust between instructor and recruit’.
Months earlier, Bethel sent several messages to another recruit on the online dating app Grindr, including a naked picture of himself, taken from the waist up.
He told him he had a cabin on HMS Raleigh and that the pair should hang out, alongside a request for a ‘pic trade’.
Even though the recruit asked Bethel to stop messaging him, he persisted, leaving his colleague feeling ‘uncomfortable, annoyed and disappointed’.
David Richards, defending, said: ‘Despite the peculiarities of his approach towards his job, he was someone who the recruits felt they could confide in.
‘He shouldn’t have behaved as he did… it was entirely inappropriate, it put recruits under pressure, but it’s not as bad an abuse of position as one could find in training establishments.’
Addressing the incident on the bus, where Bethel kissed a recruit under the age of 18, Mr Richards said there was ‘a dare shouted from the back’, adding that as soon as the instructor learned of the teenager’s age he ‘apologised profusely’.
He left the Royal Navy in June last year and has since been living in London with his partner while studying.
There are now concerns that Bethel, who was born in the Bahamas but was adopted by a Canadian family as an orphan before joining the British Army, will be sent back to the Caribbean country.
Mr Richards added: ‘The conviction is going to have a profound effect on the Home Office’s willingness to let him stay in the UK.
‘All of this is his own fault… but he is now facing a very real prospect as a result of this conviction of being sent back to a country that he now has no link to at all.’
Judge Advocate Jane England sentenced him to 12 months behind bars for sexual assault, three counts of conduct prejudicial to good order and service discipline and two counts of contravening standing orders.
She said: ‘Hitting on a recruit through a gay dating app was so far beyond the boundaries of acceptable behaviour it would have been obvious to anyone, including you.
‘Your conduct at that dinner was drunken, out of control behaviour with a complete disregard to appropriate boundaries.
‘It wasn’t a blurring of the lines, it was effectively running a bulldozer through them.’
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