The amount was half of what Lance Bombardier Kerry Fletcher, 32, had sought, but is still one of the biggest payouts imposed by a workers’ rights board.

Fletcher testified that after the military did nothing to stop the harassment when the man and his army friends attempted to destroy her career and health.

Her car was vandalized, she was belittled at work and she received threatening phone calls.

Text messages from the sergeant to the woman were entered into evidence.  In one he told her: “Look I might be able to convert you. You don’t know what you are missing.”

Her tormentor denied he had discriminated against her, claiming he was only legitimately enforcing discipline. The Ministry of Defense denied it had swept Fletcher’s complaints under the carpet.

Nevertheless, the tribunal ruled in January that Fletcher had been the victim of “direct sex discrimination and harassment,” allowing her claim for monetary damages to move forward.

Fletcher, an accomplished horsewoman and 10-year career soldier, took part in the Trooping the Color ceremony and served with distinction in Bosnia.

“She is a completely innocent person whose life has been destroyed by the Army because she was rash enough to stand up for herself,” her attorney John Mackenzie said.

After the tribunal made its initial finding, Fletcher quit the military. Mackenzie told the remedy hearing that his client’s position within the Royal Artillery became “untenable” after she won her case against the Ministry of Defense.

Even though the MoD has apologized to Fletcher, “The claimant felt unable to continue to serve within the Royal Artillery because she felt she would continue to be victimized and discriminated against,” Mackenzie told the tribunal.

“The immediate consequence of the act of discrimination is that the claimant’s career in the Royal Artillery has collapsed and it’s the respondent’s conduct that has caused this collapse.”

The British military ended its ban on gays and lesbians serving in the armed forces in 2000.

The agency has contracted with LGBT rights group Stonewall to help it recruit members of the community and to encouraged gays already in the service to come out.

The move, said Stonewall spokesperson Ben Summerskill, “is in recognition that the establishment is changing and slowly becoming more reflective of wider society.”

The British military long ago abandoned its ban on gays serving openly and also recently asked Stonewall for help in recruitment. M16, the country’s foreign intelligence service, ended its ban on gay spies a year ago.

Homosexuality was decriminalized in the UK in 1967 but gays and lesbians were barred from working in sensitive jobs in the diplomatic or security services until the early 1990s, over concerns that gay spies could be vulnerable to blackmail.

Activist Peter Tatchell said the change was long overdue.

“Until a decade ago, gay people were seen as a security threat, and as recently as two decades ago, they were being witch hunted and sacked from the security services,” he told The Associated Press.

The change is a marked turn from the height of the Cold War, when Britain’s spy agencies conducted a purge of suspected gays following the Burgess affair.

Guy Burgess was arguably the most dangerous gay man who ever lived. As a spy for the Soviet Union, the Englishman helped organize a ring of gay men who came from the highest echelons of British society.

According to documents that have been declassified from both British Intelligence and the CIA, Burgess and his fellow spies helped prolong the Cold War for years, and possibly led to the deaths of nearly a dozen western agents.

The ring of gay included Anthony Blunt, a tutor of French; Donald Maclean, a career civil servant who served in the Foreign Office, Paris, Washington and Cairo; Harold Adrian Russell “Kim” Philby, a journalist who as an agent in MI6 was a double agent also working for the Russians; and John Cairncross, the private secretary to Lord Hankey who was Secretary for Security.

On May 26, 1951, Burgess and MacLean defected to the Soviet Union, brining their espionage to light. It took the next 20 years for the others to be identified and the damage assessed.