Is There an Army Cover-Up of Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers?
By Ann Wright
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 28 April 2008
The Department of Defense statistics are alarming - one in three women who
join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military.
The warnings to women should begin above the doors of the military recruiting
stations, as that is where assaults on women in the military begin - before
they are even recruited.
But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq and in the
United States following rape. The military has characterized each death of women
who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from "noncombat related injuries,"
and then added "suicide." Yet, the families of the women whom the
military has declared to have committed suicide strongly dispute the findings
and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters.
Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate
number of women soldiers who have died of "noncombat related injuries,"
with several identified as "suicides."
Ninety-four US military women have died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom
(OIF). Twelve US civilian women have been killed in OIF. Thirteen US military
women have been killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).
Twelve US Civilian women have been killed in Afghanistan.
Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36
died from noncombat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness,
death by "natural causes" and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide.
The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain, which were
killed by a third sailor, as homicides. Five deaths have been labeled as suicides,
but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.
Eight women soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas, (six from the Fourth Infantry Division
and two from the 1st Armored Cavalry Division) have died of "noncombat
related injuries" on the same base, Camp Taji, and three were raped before
their deaths. Two were raped immediately before their deaths and another raped
prior to arriving in Iraq. Two military women have died of suspicious "noncombat
related injuries" on Balad base, and one was raped before she died. Four
deaths have been classified as "suicides."
Nineteen-year-old US Army Pvt. Lavena Johnson was found dead on the military
base in Balad, Iraq, in July, 2005, and her death characterized by the US Army
to be suicide from a self-inflicted M-16 shot. On April 9, 2008, Dr. John Johnson
and his wife Linda, parents of Private Johnson, flew from their home in St.
Louis for meetings with US Congress members and their staffs. They were in Washington
to ask that Congressional hearings be conducted on the Army's investigation
into the death of their daughter, an investigation that classified her death
as a suicide despite extensive evidence suggesting she was murdered.
From the day their daughter's body was returned to them, the parents had grave
suspicions about the Army's investigation into Lavena's death and the characterization
of her death as suicide. In charge of a communications facility, Lavena was
able to call home daily. In those calls, she gave no indication of emotional
problems or being upset. In a letter to her parents, Lavena's commanding officer
Capt. David Woods wrote, "Lavena was clearly happy and seemed in very good
health both physically and emotionally."
In viewing his daughter's body at the funeral home, Dr. Johnson was concerned
about the bruising on her face. He was puzzled by the discrepancy in the autopsy
report on the location of the gunshot wound. As a US Army veteran and a 25-year
US Army civilian employee who had counseled veterans, he was mystified how the
exit wound of an M-16 shot could be so small. The hole in Lavena's head appeared
to be more the size of a pistol shot rather than an M-16 round. He questioned
why the exit hole was on the left side of her head, when she was right handed.
But the gluing of military uniform white gloves onto Lavena's hands, hiding
burns on one of her hands, is what deepened Dr. Johnson's concerns that the
Army's investigation into the death of his daughter was flawed.
Over the next two and one-half years, Dr. and Mrs. Johnson and their family
and friends relentlessly, through the Freedom of Information Act and Congressional
offices requested the Department of the Army for documents concerning Lavena's
death. With each response of the Army to the request for information, another
piece of information/evidence about Lavena's death emerged.
The military criminal investigator's initial drawing of the death scene revealed
Lavena's M16 was found perfectly parallel to her body. The investigator's sketch
showed her body was found inside a burning tent, under a wooden bench, with
an aerosol can nearby. A witness stated he heard a gunshot and, when he went
to investigate, found a tent on fire, and when he looked into the tent, saw
a body. The Army official investigation did not mention a fire or that her body
had been burned.
After two years of requesting documents, one set of papers provided by the
Army included a photocopy copy of a CD. Wondering why the photocopy copy was
in the documents, Dr. Johnson requested the CD itself. With help from his local
Congressional representative, the US Army finally complied. When Dr. Johnson
viewed the CD, he was shocked to see photographs taken by Army investigators
of his daughter's body as it lay where her body had been found, as well as other
photographs of her disrobed body taken during the investigation.
The photographs revealed that Lavena, a small woman, barely five feet tall
and weighing less than 100 pounds, had been struck in the face with a blunt
instrument, perhaps a weapon stock. Her nose was broken and her teeth knocked
backwards. One elbow was distended. The back of her clothes had debris on them
indicating she had been dragged from one location to another. The photographs
of her disrobed body showed bruises, scratch marks and teeth imprints on the
upper part of her body. The right side of her back as well as her right hand
had been burned, apparently from a flammable liquid poured on her and then lighted.
The photographs of her genital area revealed massive bruising and lacerations.
A corrosive liquid had been poured into her genital area, probably to destroy
DNA evidence of sexual assault.
Despite the bruises, scratches, teeth imprints and burns on her body, Lavena
was found completely dressed in the burning tent. There was a blood trail from
outside a contractor's tent to inside the tent. Apparently, she had been dressed
after the attack and her attacker placed her body into the tent and set it on
fire.
Investigator records reveal members of her unit said Lavena told them she was
going jogging with friends on the other side of the base. One unit member walked
with her to the Post Exchange where she bought a soda and then, in her Army
workout clothes, went on by herself to meet friends and get exercise. The unit
member said she was in good spirits with no indication of personal emotional
problems.
The Army investigators initially assumed Private Johnson's death was a homicide
and indicated that on their paperwork. However, shortly into the investigation,
a decision apparently was made by higher officials that the investigators must
stop the investigation into a homicide and to classify her death a suicide.
As a result, no further investigation took place into a possible homicide,
despite strong evidence available to the investigators.
Another family that does not believe their daughter committed suicide in Iraq
is the family of Army Pfc. Tina Priest, 20, of Smithville, Texas, who was raped
by a fellow soldier in February, 2006, on a military base known as Camp Taji.
Priest was a part of the 5th Support Battalion, lst Brigade Combat Team, 4th
Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. The Army said Tina was found dead in her
room on March 1, 2006, of a self-inflicted M-16 shot, a "suicide",
11 days after the rape. Private Priest's mother, Joy Priest, disputes the Army's
findings. Mrs. Priest said she talked several times with her daughter after
the rape, and while very upset about the rape, she was not suicidal. Priest
continues to challenge the Army's 800 pages of investigative documents with
a simple question: How could her petite, five-foot-tall daughter, with a short
arm length, have held the M-16 at the angle that would have resulted in the
gunshot? The Army attempted several explanations, but each was debunked by Mrs.
Priest and by the 800 pages of materials provided by the Army itself. The Army
now says Tina used her toe to pull the trigger of the weapon that killed her.
The Army never investigated Tina's death as a homicide, but only as a suicide.
Rape charges against the soldier whose sperm was found on her sleeping bag
were dropped a few weeks after her death. He was convicted of failure to obey
an order and sentenced to forfeiture of $714 for two months, 30 days restriction
to the base and 45 days of extra duty.
On the same Camp Taji, ten days later after Tina Priest was found dead, on
May 11, 2006, a female US Army Pfc. (name known to author, but not identified
for the article), 19, was found dead. She died three days after she suffered
what the Army called "a self-inflicted gunshot". The Army claimed
she, too, had committed suicide. In her room, where her body was found, investigators
discovered her diary open to a page on which she had written about being raped
during training, after unknowingly drinking a date-rape drug. The person identified
in the diary as the rapist was charged by the Army with rape after her death.
Many who knew her did not believe she shot herself, but there is no evidence
of a homicide investigation by the Army.
The September 4, 2006, the death at Camp Taji of Pfc. Hannah Gunterman McKinney,
20, of the 44th Corps Support Battalion, Ft. Lewis, Washington, was investigated.
Rather than having been run over by a military vehicle as she crossed a road
from a guard tower to the latrine, as initially claimed by the Army, she fell,
or was pushed from, and run over by a vehicle driven by a drunk sergeant from
her unit, who had first sexually assaulted her. The sergeant pleaded guilty
to drinking in a war zone, drunken driving and consensual sodomy with an underage,
incapacitated junior soldier to whom he had supplied alcohol. A military judge
ruled McKinney's death was an accident and the sergeant was sentenced to 13
months imprisonment, demotion to private, but he would not be discharged from
the Army.
Other suspicious "noncombat related injury" deaths on Camp Taji include
Fort Hood's 1st Armored Cavalry Division Pfc. Melissa J. Hobart (who died June
6, 2004), 1st Armored Cavalry Sgt. Jeannette Dunn (who died November 26, 2006),
89th Military Police Brigade Specialist Kamisha J. Block (who died August, 2007),
4th Infantry Division Specialist Marisol Heredia (who died September 7, 2007)
and 4th Infantry Division Specialist Keisha M. Morgan (who died February, 22,
2008). None of the deaths have been classified as suicides, but the circumstances
of their deaths should be investigated further because of serious questions
concerning their deaths.
The US Army has classified the deaths of four other women as suicides. In the
space of three months in 2006, three members of the US Army, who had been part
of a logistics group in Kuwait, committed suicide. Two of them were women. In
August 2006, Lt. Col. Marshall Gutierrez was arrested at a restaurant in Kuwait
and accused of shaking down a laundry contractor for a $3,400 bribe. He was
allowed to return to his quarters, and found dead on September 4, 2006, with
an empty bottle of prescription sleeping pills and an open container of what
appeared to be antifreeze.
Maj. Gloria D. Davis, 47, assigned to the Defense Security Assistance Agency,
which handles the sales of military equipment to other countries, reportedly
committed suicide in Baghdad on December 12, 2006, the day after she allegedly
admitted to an Army investigator that she had accepted at least $225,000 in
bribes from Lee Dynamics, a US Army contractor, who reportedly bribed officers
for work in Iraq. Major Davis had a daughter, son and granddaughter. She had
worked as a police officer, was a volunteer at women's shelters and helped get
disadvantaged African-American students into ROTC programs.
New York Army National Guard Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman, 46, was assigned to a
desk job at a procurement office in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, that purchased millions
of dollars in supplies. She received excellent performance ratings, her supervisor
citing that her work eliminated misuse of funds by 36 percent. On October 1,
2006, Lannaman was questioned by a senior officer about the death of Lt. Col.
Gutierrez, and reportedly told by that officer that she would be leaving the
military in disgrace. Later in the day, she was found in a jeep, dead of a gunshot
wound. While her family said she had attempted suicide four different times
in her life, the Army has not ruled on the cause of Lannaman's death.
US Army interrogator Specialist Alyssa Renee Peterson, 27, assigned to C Company,
311th Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne Division, Ft. Campbell,
Kentucky, was an Arabic linguist, who reportedly was very concerned about the
manner in which interrogations were being conducted. She died on September 15,
2003, near Tal Afar, Iraq, in what the Army described as a gunshot wound to
the head, a noncombat, self-inflicted weapons discharge, or suicide. Peterson
reportedly objected to the interrogation techniques used on prisoners and refused
to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage.
Members of her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Peterson
objected to. The military says all records of those techniques have now been
destroyed. After refusing to conduct more interrogations, Peterson was assigned
to guard the base gate, where she monitored Iraqi guards. She was also sent
to suicide-prevention training. On the night of September 15, 2003, Army investigators
concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle. Family members
challenge the Army's conclusion.
US Army Sgt. Melissa Valles, 26, assigned to Headquarters Detachment, Company
B, 64th Forward Support Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, Fort Carson, Colorado,
died on July 9, 2003, in Balad from two noncombat gunshot wounds to her abdomen.
The Army has not ruled whether her death was a suicide or a homicide. But Valles's
family stated that, although small in stature at five-foot-three, she was a
tough person. "She really put people in their place. She did that since
she was a girl. She would put little boys who were bullies in their place."
The family does not believe Valles committed suicide.
One suspicious noncombat death of a military woman occurred in Afghanistan.
On September 28, 2007, Massachusetts Army National Guard Specialist Ciara Durkin,
30, a finance specialist, was found lying near a church on the very secure Bagram
Air Base, Afghanistan, with a single gunshot wound to her head. She had recently
told her relatives to press for answers if anything happened to her while she
was deployed in Afghanistan. When she was home three weeks prior to her death,
she told her sister about something she had come across that raised some concern
with her and that she had made some enemies because of it. Members of her family
also questioned whether the fact that she was gay played a role in her death.
They believe Ciara was killed by a fellow service member, intentionally or accidentally,
and they are confident that she did not commit suicide.
In Bahrain, on January 16, 2007, US Navy Petty Officer First Class Jennifer
A. Valdivia, 27, assigned to the naval security force for Naval Support Activity,
Bahrain, was found dead three days after she was to report for duty on January
14. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has classified her death as a suicide.
Valdivia was kennel master of the largest military kennel in the world. In 2005,
she was named Sailor of the Year at the Bahrain Naval Base.
The circumstances surrounding each of these deaths warrants further investigation
by the US military. Congress can compel the military to reopen cases and provide
further investigation. I strongly urge Congress to demand further investigation
of the deaths of these women.
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US Army Reserve Colonel, Retired, Ann Wright is a 29-year veteran of the Army
and Army Reserves. She was also a US diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia.
She resigned from the US Department of State in March 19, 2003, in opposition
to the Iraq War. She is the co-author of "Dissent: Voices of Conscience."
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