A Royal Navy sailor has reportedly been found guilty of multiple sexual assault offenses after a court martial was told she repeatedly groped her fellow sailors on a warship, targeting both men and women during a two-year period.
Able Seaman Sian Dowsett, 25, was convicted of six out of seven counts of sexual assault following a trial at Bulford Military Court in Wiltshire.
The offenses were committed over two years, between 2023 and 2024, while she was serving aboard the Portsmouth-based warship HMS Dauntless, a Type 45 destroyer.
Prosecutors told the court Dowsett subjected four fellow sailors, two men and two women, to a course of sexual harassment, including groping male sailors on their crotches, stroking their arms, and making lewd remarks, including, “I like my coffee how I like my men, big and strong.”
Prosecutors told the court Dowsett also groped female sailors, slapping their buttocks and squeezing their breasts, making lewd remarks, including, “Do you like that, baby girl?”
Graham Coombes, closing for the prosecution, told the court: “The defendant is a strong, confident, intimidating personality, moving around the ship, sexually assaulting those she took a fancy to.”
His summary of his closing speech told how Dowsett’s offenses followed a pattern, “from nipple pinching, bottom slapping, and genital grabbing.”
Mr. Coombes told the court that Dowsett seemed to pick on new female sailors and male sailors she thought would not report her offenses.
“She chose those she thought would not report her,” he told the court.
Mr. Coombes dismissed Dowsett’s claim that she had been framed by witnesses, saying, “Ten witnesses gave evidence against her.”
“These are serious allegations; they are not trivial,” he told the court.
“Would they really do that?”
The male sailor told the investigators that Dowsett had slapped him on the buttocks in the ship’s galley just weeks into the deployment, leaving the sailor “stunned.” The sailor said he had decided not to report the incident because he did not want to cause tension on the long voyage, but also because he doubted the chain of command would take the complaint seriously.
The sailor said the incidents continued, prompting him to tell Dowsett he would report her if they did. In the police interview, the sailor said, “She’s a bit of a cancer on the ship, to be honest. It’s affecting the morale, it’s affecting the personal relationship I have with her, so yeah, it’s affecting me quite a bit, yeah.”
“It is just disrespectful. A lack of respect, really. It is just going to get worse. She is just going to go to another ship and do it again.”
In another incident, the court heard Dowsett had touched the breasts of the petty officer, caressing her nipple, while the woman was changing. The petty officer said the incident was unwanted and made her uncomfortable, but that she was not friends with Dowsett.
Further testimony was heard about the incidents, including the one where Dowsett repeatedly pinched the nipple of the male sailor during the lesson, followed by her later grabbing the sailor’s genitals after the deployment. The newly assigned female sailor also testified that Dowsett had slapped her buttocks several times, hard enough to sting, while commenting on her body.
Dowsett said during the service police interview that she was heterosexual but had bisexual tendencies.
The court-martial was told that it was a pattern of behavior against several different victims.
Dowsett will be sentenced at a later date.
