HarperLee

Rape Victim's Death Ruled 'Suicide' by Army -- Henry Waxman, where are you?

FireDogLake, July 28, 2008

The Jamie Leigh Jones-Halliburton rape case was horrific, but what happened to PFC Lavena Johnson in Iraq in 2005 was many orders of magnitudes worse.

The parents of the young Missouri woman were told that she died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and her death was ruled a suicide. But her physician father became suspicious after looking at injuries to the body:

After two years of requesting documents, one set of papers provided by the Army included a xerox copy of a CD. Wondering why the xerox 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 5 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. She apparently had been dressed after the attack and her attacker placed her body into the tent and set it on fire.

The Electronic Village has been working hard to draw attention to this tragedy. Color of Change has now joined the battle and is asking people to contact Henry Waxman and ask him to conduct hearings as chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Amy Goodman had an interview with Lavena's parents you can listen to here. Just heartbreaking. [See link to listen.]

http://firedoglake.com/2008/07/28/ra...where-are-you/

We need A Few Good Men, but, alas, Bush 43
fired David Iglesias whose story the movie was based on.

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Heretic

Most amazing suicide I ever heard of. Shoots herself, dags herself around, busts her own face then sets herself on fire.

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julia

Digg - Rape Victim’s Death Ruled “Suicide” By Army-Where's Waxman?

That's looks very weird but it's the Digg link to the article.

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PursuitOfHappinessParty

What, are you saying our government might be full of shit? Are you suggesting that there could be a 'us and them' feeling in the military that would lead to them putting themselves above the law?
PShaw on you.

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Heretic

Not a lot of imagination will be found in military investigators.

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"In space no one can hear you scream. in D.C. it won't matter..." -Clinton Resurrection: The Alien Queen lives!

PursuitOfHappinessParty

Thankfully. Otherwise, there would've been card-board WMDs found in Iraq.....

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" Tie two birds together and though they have four wings they cannot fly " Blind Master in 'Circle Of Iron'

leftparadise

women in the US military are in greater danger frome their "fellow" soliders/contractors than from the enemy. the media does not report it, the brass ignores it and the women stop reporting it because the military punish the victim instead of the rapists.

ibex

Any unchecked power, whether it's a branch of government, the military, a huge corporation or an individual with outsized control of his or her situation will eventually consume and destroy anything or anyone around them, secure in the knowledge of their own immunity from prosecution. Right wingers would undoubtedly look at this case and blame the presence of women in the military for this horrific event, a stance they will base on their notions of gender traditions in time of war and ordinary common sense, when in reality it's a disgusting "blame the victim" scenario. There's a Chinese proverb, "A fish rots from the head down." Call me crazy, but once the top of the chain of command says it's okay to torture and kill imprisoned enemy combatants, it's not a big leap for some in the military and private contract security to prey upon the physically more vulnerable within their own ranks.

julia

Spot on, ibex.

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