David Bonney realised his employer, the Royal Air Force, was investigating his sexuality within minutes of entering the guard room at RAF Mount Batten, a military base near Plymouth. It was 1991 and Bonney, then a 21-year-old medical assistant, had just been escorted from his post at the medical centre by military police. He sat down in the guard room, opposite the duty staff, and the interrogation began.
“Questions about my sex life,” says Bonney, now 55. “Questions about witnessing me with other gay people. Questions about things I said on the phone to my mother.” He says there was shouting, swearing, banging on the desk. “Threats to me, threats to my career, threats to my family.” Bonney hadn’t told anyone in the military that he was gay. Before 2000, it was illegal for gay people to serve in the British armed forces and he knew a confession would cost him his career. “They wanted to get rid of me,” he says. “Anything they could to just manipulate me into confessing, to frighten the hell out of me.”
