8 years later, abuse soldier Lynndie England tells of her anguish – but won’t apologize to ‘enemy’
The Daily
Monday, March 19, 2012
PHOTO:Brian Zak/The Daily - Lynndie England became the face of America’s shame in the Abu Ghraib scandal eight years ago. England was convicted of abusing Abu Ghraib prisoners.
FORT ASHBY, W.Va. — Eight years before an American soldier shot 16 civilians in Afghanistan, there was another case of tragic military misconduct that ruined lives and threatened to derail a war effort.
Today, the former soldier who became the callous, “thumbs-up” emblem of the Abu Ghraib scandal lives with her parents in rural West Virginia, raising the son of the man who perpetrated the worst of the torture at the Iraqi prison. Things are so rough for her, Lynndie England told The Daily in a wide-ranging interview, that she has trouble finding much reason to feel bad for the detainees she and her colleagues abused.
“Their lives are better. They got the better end of the deal,” England said. “They weren’t innocent. They’re trying to kill us, and you want me to apologize to them? It’s like saying sorry to the enemy.”
The latest atrocity, in which U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is accused of massacring women and children in Afghanistan villages, is a reminder of the stain Abu Ghraib left on the American military effort in Iraq. England’s lawyer declined to comment on Bales and she didn’t respond to a phone message.
England was front and center in the explosive photographs that depicted physical, sexual and psychological abuse of Iraqi detainees at the prison near Baghdad. The scandal that erupted in 2004 was a disastrous blight on the Iraq war and the George W. Bush White House, leading to calls for then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign.
In one photo, England dangles a cigarette from her half-cocked smile as she gives what became popularized as “doing the Lynndie” — a thumbs-up with her right hand and gesture with her left like a gun toward a row of naked detainees with hoods covering their heads.
“All the prisoners that were there were on that tier of high-priority. They were there for a reason. They had killed coalition forces or they were planning to,” England told The Daily over a hamburger at a Mexican restaurant near her home in Fort Ashby. “They had information about where insurgents were hiding.”
England and 10 fellow soldiers were slapped with dishonorable discharges and stints in a military brig. She was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act in 2005 and served 521 days in a military prison.
England grew up in the backwaters of Appalachia and despite earning good marks in high school, she was hell-bent on escaping what she saw as a life destined to be behind the cash register of the local IGA supermarket. So she joined the Army.
Now 29, England is back in her parents’ home. She is virtually unemployable and haunted by her past. Charles Graner, her former lover and the ringleader of the Abu Ghraib abuses, refuses to acknowledge his 7-year-old son despite a 2009 paternity test proving he is the father
“Graner didn’t want anything to do with the baby,” England said.
The two met while stationed at Fort Lee in Virginia in 2003. She was a 20-year-old newlywed, he a divorced 34-year-old former Marine. England said she succumbed to Graner’s gregarious personality and charm. Their baby was conceived in Iraq, but all the while, Graner was two-timing England with a third Abu Ghraib specialist, Megan Ambuhl.
“You could say I did love Graner,” England said. “Now, I can’t stand the thought of him.”
The tumult of the last decade has left England visibly anguished. Gray strands have appeared in her long, dark hair.
The Army dishonorably discharged her last year, formally severing her surrogate family. She misses the routine of the service; the food, the uniform. She still wears her old camouflage gear while doing yard work.
“It just feels like the umbilical cord has been cut,” she said. “I could really go for an MRE right now,” she said of the Army’s meals ready to eat.
With no help or career counseling from Uncle Sam, England found herself with a radioactive name in a bleak job market in rural West Virginia. She tried to co-author a memoir with a local history author, but she claims he stole her story and published the book on his own. The only employment England can muster is seasonal secretarial work for a sympathetic accountant who has known her since she was a teen.
“I would put out applications everywhere. I can’t get McDonald’s, Burger King,” she said. “It’s the felony they can’t get past. I only get a job during tax season.”
With next to no work and her son at school, England has too much time to ruminate. She was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but recently stopped taking antidepressants and seeing her therapist.
She barely sleeps, she said. England anguishes over the belief that the photos from Abu Ghraib could have caused American casualties.
“That’s something that falls on my head,” she said. “I think about it all the time — indirect deaths that were my fault. Losing people on our side because of me coming out on a picture.”
Images on television and sounds in the streets trigger memories of her time in Iraq — and in prison.
“Somebody dropped something off the [store] shelf and I freaked out,” she said. “It was two aisles down. They dropped something on the floor and made a big bang and I was like, ‘Ah!’ ”
England is paranoid. She believes people follow her at the grocery store, and she’s fearful someone will exact revenge. She’s tried to disguise herself and considered changing her name.
“You wonder why I’m always looking over my shoulder,” she said. “It could be 20 years down the road. People wait. They have patience.”
There are few things that give her respite. Legally barred from carrying a weapon, she can no longer join her father on hunts for squirrel, deer and turkey like she did before the war.
Now, England’s life centers around raising son Carter.
“I thought maybe I would meet some guy and then get married and he’ll adopt him and then he’ll be his daddy,” England said. “It’s gone on eight years now since I left Iraq, since I’ve really been out with a guy.”
She knows her life in Fort Ashby is a compromise — it’s very close to the one she tried to leave behind when she enrolled in the Army. Still, England said her role in the Abu Ghraib disaster has been redeemed because it gave her a son.
“If I say I regret getting with Graner then I say that I regret Carter. And I don’t,” she said. “I wouldn’t give up Carter for anything. And if going through that whole ordeal is what was supposed to happen to me to have Carter then that’s how some things are.”
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