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
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."