The “possessive and psychotic” boss of a teenage soldier who is thought to have killed herself after he sent her thousands of text messages has been named.
Bombardier Ryan Mason sent the Royal Artillery gunner Jaysley Beck, 19, a “relentless” barrage of “I love you” messages, a coroner’s court was told.
Mason, named for the first time at the opening of the inquest, told his teenage subordinate that “I love everything about you”, in some of the 3,600 WhatsApp and voicemail messages he sent in the month before she died.
As Beck became overwhelmed with the advances of her line manager, she replied to her boss: “This whole falling in love with me, it’s becoming a bit too much. I’ve just come out of a relationship, I’m just not wanting to be involved in anything like this. It’s weighing me down a little bit …”
On another occasion, she told him: “Totally honest here, I just don’t want to hear how you feel about me.”
Leighann McCready, Beck’s mother, told Wiltshire and Swindon coroner’s court that her daughter said Mason “was becoming creepy” and she feared he had “hacked” her mobile phone.
“It was relentless,” McCready told the inquest. “He was throwing [his problems] at her constantly because of her kind, caring nature, he knew that she would be there to support him.”
Beck is thought to have killed herself on the Larkhill Camp base in Wiltshire in December 2021 after being relentlessly pursued by her boss and other senior men for sexual relationships.
After her death a Ministry of Defence inquiry concluded that this “unwelcome” harassment was a “causal factor” in her death.
Other factors included an affair with a married senior non-commissioned officer who would frequently turn up drunk to her room on the Larkhill base and a previous “toxic” relationship with an instructor at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, which she joined as a 16-year-old.
Beck had lost confidence in reporting sexual harassment after a warrant officer put his hands between her legs but was only instructed to write her a letter of apology as a consequence. In it, he wrote: “If ever there is anything I can do for you, my door will always be open.”
At the start of the two-week inquest, the court was told that Beck and Mason’s relationship started normally but he began “overstepping the mark” and she became “scared” of him.
After graduating from training in February 2020, Beck, from Oxen Park in Cumbria, had been posted to the 14th Regiment Royal Artillery. A year later she joined the Corps Engagement Team where she was managed by Mason, who was “really struggling with his mental health”.
McCready, giving evidence, said her daughter did not want to inform anyone about Mason’s behaviour because she did not want to be known as “the female troublemaker”.
“With her being female, she didn’t feel that they were seen as highly as the male soldier,” McCready said. “The males are more dominant within the army as opposed to equal.”
McCready said her daughter told her, “he’s actually scaring me now mum”, as the behaviour and messages from Mason became more intense.
“He wouldn’t allow other males to work alongside her,” she said. “Ryan Mason, being her senior, was stopping her other colleagues from going away on these adventures with her. It became apparent — his possessive behaviour towards Jaysley.”
In one message, Mason told Beck: “You seriously make everything go away. Even though obviously there’s nothing there, just you being you, being funny as fuck, being to the point and being your genuine self.”
In another he said: “You’re amazing Jaysley, I appreciate you so much, I love everything about you, even your flaws and I’m so grateful to call you my friend … You are stuck with me forever now. It’s signed and sealed, I love you x.”
He followed this up with: “As a friend that is. It’s perfectly fine to love a friend.”
On another occasion Mason said: “I do love you Jaysley. I know you’ll be sick of hearing it. And I know you think I’m confused. But you don’t see what I see or feel what I feel. It’s everything about you.”
The inquest was told that an incident involving Mason and Beck took place on December 7, weeks before her death, at The Chequers Hotel in Newbury, Berkshire. McCready said that at 7.10pm her daughter phoned her and appeared “absolutely heartbroken” and was “trembling as she spoke”. She said her daughter told her, “I need to get out of here” and “I believe Ryan is listening to me now” and he was “freaking” her out.
When asked what had occurred, the teenager just “couldn’t get her words out” and described Mason as being “possessive and psychotic”.
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In a message she planned to send to him, Beck said: “I honestly feel trapped in this whole situation … I have tried to act as normal as possible because we are working together, but nothing is normal about this behaviour.”
McCready said her daughter put her “heart and soul” into the army and she was “proud of the service despite how disorganised the army was”.
Bombardier John Wheeler, a friend of Beck, said he advised her to report Mason to a commissioning officer, but “ultimately she didn’t want to”.
“I think it was due to the mental strain [Mason] was under,” he said. “She would say that if anything was to happen to him she would blame herself.”
When asked if he contemplated reporting Mason on her behalf, Wheeler said: “In hindsight it was what I should have done, but I would have abused her trust in me and that would have ruined our friendship.”
The inquest continues.
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