British soldiers training in Kenya have allegedly engaged in initiation ceremonies where younger recruits are forced into having unprotected sex with prostitutes to prove how ‘brave’ they are, according to Mail Online reports.

In the initiation ceremony, it’s said that senior soldiers flip a coin to decide whether the new soldier wears a condom or not.

“When this unit deploys on exercise to the British Army Training Unit Kenya, they have an initiation ceremony for all new soldiers who haven’t deployed to Kenya before,” one soldier told Mail Online.

‘The more senior soldiers would flip a coin – heads you could use a condom, tails you could not.’

Defense chiefs are worried about these claims because Kenya has high rates of HIV/AIDS, affecting about one in 20 people.

A report written by the Defense Medical Services, reveals that although a guide to sexual health is issued on arrival in the East African country, the number of soldiers seeking help for related diseases increased compared with UK-based troops.

It further stated that the risk of getting a sexually transmitted disease from a prostitute could not only decrease the unit’s effectiveness in operations but also poses a risk to their global reputation.

Five per cent of Kenya’s population is HIV-positive compared with 0.2 per cent in the UK.

“To hear that soldiers are being forced into some form of sexual initiation ceremony where HIV rates are very high, shocks me to the core. Once again highlights a failure in leadership and that the culture in the Army is still fundamentally broken,”  former Army intelligence officer Philip Ingram said.

The Ministry of Defense spokesman said that that they are committed to preventing sexual exploitation, citing that all sexual activity which involves the abuse of power, including buying sex whether in the UK or abroad is prohibited.

Approximately 10,000 British soldiers are annually sent to Kenya for live firing drills lasting up to eight weeks.