The founder of a charity for female veterans has been honoured for her work helping women who have been sexually abused by colleagues.
Paula Edwards set up Salute Her UK after discovering there was little support for servicewomen who had been the victims of rape or sexual assault within the Armed Forces.
She was one of 28 individuals presented with a British Citizen Award at the Palace of Westminster on Thursday. Often referred to as The People’s Honours, the awards have recognised the country’s unsung heroes for the past 11 years.
Ms Edwards, from Newcastle, was working for another military charity, Forward Assist, when she was tasked with setting up Britain’s first veterans’ charity specifically for women.
Since then 6,000 women have received help from Salute Her UK, 98 per cent of whom have been victims of sexual assault.
Exposing ‘serious problems’ in Armed Forces
The charity’s work led to the 2021 Atherton inquiry into bullying, harassment, discrimination and sexual offences against women in the Armed Forces, written by the parliamentary sub-committee on women in the Armed Forces.
The inquiry found “truly shocking evidence” of bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape of servicewomen and “serious problems” with the way the Armed Forces had handled complaints of sexual assault.
Ms Edwards, 45, said: “We found that women weren’t seeking help from other military charities because they were largely run by men and by people who were still in the military.
“They found that if they reported sexual assaults by colleagues, they ended up losing their career.”
Using her 25 years of experience as an NHS trauma therapist, Ms Edwards set up Salute Her UK, becoming chief executive in 2021. Its success has led to similar women-only military charities being set up abroad.
Also among those honoured was Clare Dingwall, 59, from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, who raised more than £167,000 through her charity Polo For Heroes, which she co-founded in 2009.
Ms Dingwall, a medical secretary who had helped organise polo matches in the past, decided to use her connections to stage an annual match at Fifield Polo Club in Berkshire, where physically and mentally injured veterans make up mixed teams with regular polo players.
The money raised at the events has been used to fund trips to Las Vegas, South Africa and India, where injured veterans have been able to relax and help residents, including children living in orphanages.
Ms Dingwall said: “What I realised was that the most important thing to the veterans was being together, because they badly missed belonging to the Armed Forces.
“By doing things like helping children at orphanages to write CVs and learn other skills, it gave them back that sense of being able to help other people.”
Holly Baird, 33, from Solihull, West Midlands, was honoured for her work with The Daniel Baird Foundation, named after her brother who was stabbed to death at the age of 26 in 2017 during a night out with friends after a job interview.
She and her family set up the charity to raise awareness of, and access to, bleed-control kits, which could have saved Baird’s life if one had been available when he was attacked.
The charity has so far placed 35,000 bleed-control kits in shopping centres, pubs, clubs, railway stations and elsewhere so that first aiders can stem blood loss until professional medical help arrives.
Their locations are mapped so that 999 callers can be told whether there is one nearby, and they have been credited with saving several lives – the vast majority involving accidents rather than criminal acts.
The awards, which are presented twice yearly, are sponsored by the local convenience store chain One Stop.