SWLSparachute – by Peter Walsh and Faye Mayern
A man has gone on trial accused of claiming he had a distinguished career in the army to avoid going to jail for a firearms offence.
Paul Berryman, 62, was due to be sentenced for possession of a prohibited shotgun.
The offence carries a mandatory prison sentence of five years unless there are exceptional circumstances.
However Norwich Crown Court has heard Berryman made grand claims about having served in the military for almost 30 years to try to avoid prison.
He is now on trial for perverting the course of justice after he claimed he had fought for the Parachute Regiment in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands.
The court heard Berryman also claimed he had been left with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after serving from 1979 until 2007.
The trial heard that documents provided by Berryman to the judge in the 2019 firearms case, purportedly to show he had served in the army, contained a number of basic spelling errors.
The words ‘parachute’, ‘military’, ‘Falklands’ and ‘battalion’ were all spelled incorrectly.
That judge became suspicious and the sentencing hearing was adjourned as an investigation was carried out into Berryman’s record.
It found he had enlisted in the British Army on November 23, 1979, and was discharged less than two weeks later, on December 5, before he could even complete his basic training.
Berryman, of Diss, Norfolk, had admitted possessing a prohibited shotgun in November 2018 and was due to be sentenced the following year.
This week it was heard Berryman told the court he was an ‘armed services veteran’ who had served ‘for a number of years’.
The trial heard this was in order to demonstrate exceptional circumstances that would enable him to avoid the mandatory jail sentence.
Hannah Gladwell, opening the prosecution case on Monday, said Berryman claimed he had served in the Paras in the Falklands, Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a “distinguished military career between 1979 and 2007”.
Berryman professed to have left the military after suffering PTSD as a result of his “violent” service.
He also provided documents, including a record of his military service and a reference from a retired senior officer.
But Miss Gladwell said “there were a number of errors” present in the paperwork provided by Berryman causing the sentencing judge in 2019 to “question the authenticity of the documents provided”.
“If this was a genuine document from the British Army you would’ve expected it to be spelt correctly”, she said.
Miss Gladwell told the jury of 10 women and two men that these documents were produced as part of repeated efforts by Berryman to claim his circumstances were exceptional.
Berryman claimed that after completing basic training he was based with the Parachute Regiment at Merville Barracks in Colchester.
The prosecutor countered that, although the regiment is now based there, it only moved to the Essex location in 2008. Previously, it was in Aldershot, in Hampshire.
Miss Gladwell said: “He couldn’t have served in the Parachute Regiment there in 1979 because it was not there”.
Berryman, who is representing himself in court, has denied the offence.
The trial continues.
ENDS
