The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) officer who was under investigation for sexual harassment, including rape, has been asked to resign and will lose all post-service benefits the army announced on Thursday.

At the same time, the JDF said it has advised all his victims of their right to make official reports to the police.

Stating that its investigation, which began in October 2022, has been concluded, the JDF said the probe revealed that the officer is in breach of the organisation’s Sexual Harassment (Prevention) Policy 2018 and the Personal Relationships and Fraternisation Policy.

The allegations against the senior officer became public in October with some reports stating that there were as many as 16 complainants. However, the army responded by saying it wished to “refute statements in the media that have asserted that there are a specific number of reports against the alleged accused”.

The JDF also said it had recalled the officer from training overseas “to enable further investigation and the appropriate disciplinary proceedings”.

On October 31, Chief of Defence Staff Rear Admiral Wemyss Gorman told journalist Dionne Jackson Miller on her news and current affairs programme Beyond the Headlines on Radio Jamaica that the police had not yet been called in to investigate the matter.

“[The] investigation has been ongoing. If it amounts to that, it will amount to that. At this point it’s just ongoing investigation,” Wemyss Gorman told Jackson Miller when asked if the matter had been referred to the police.

Before the JDF chief’s interview, the Jamaica Observer had called the Centre for Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse (CISOCA) to find out if the police are involved in the probe. However, a senior officer told the Observer to direct the question to the JDF and repeated that answer when other questions were asked.

In its news release on Thursday, the JDF said it was guided by the Sexual Harassment (Prevention) Policy 2018 which details specific actions to be taken if those culpable are proven to be in breach of the policy.

“The Defence Board has since called for the resignation of the officer, which will result in the termination of all benefits post service,” the JDF said, adding that it adopts a zero-tolerance approach “for actions that are in breach of its policies and continues to implore service members and civilians who are aware of any breach of any policy to use the approved processes to report them”.

The case has not gone down well with soldiers within the lower ranks who, in October, pointed to the case of two soldiers in March 2021 who were quickly arrested following the rape of a fellow woman soldier at Up Park Camp and charged by the police.

At the time, the JDF said the matter was immediately reported to CISOCA and was being investigated by that agency.