Lyndee england trial

He was 15 years older. He used to follow her out to the smoking area. Graner didn't smoke, though; he just wanted to see her. I didn't think about it at the time. He acted like he was 3 years old. Their affair started in March , while they were stationed in Fort Lee. She was a really quiet girl," says former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib during England's stint. Their paths cross for the first time.

He's much older, and he's full of himself. He's just got that kind of personality. Paying attention. He seemed far more experienced and worldly than anyone she knew. It only took a few short conversations. She was enamored with him. He likes to do stuff. Wild things. According to court documents, Graner beat his former wife, Staci Morris, and dragged her by the hair across a room. A former civilian prison guard, he'd also been accused in a federal lawsuit of assaulting an inmate at Pennsylvania's State Correctional Institution-Greene in and putting a razor blade in the inmate's mashed potatoes.

England brought Graner home with her to Fort Ashby in early With a foul mouth and pierced nipples they saw those later , he didn't make a good impression. That day, recalls Terrie, he stood in their living room and slowly looked around. He remained standing. I said, 'You're nothing but trying to get into my daughter's pants. I said, 'Here's the door and don't let it hit you on the way out,'" she recalls. Maybe when he was born, something fell out of his ear that was supposed to be attached to his brain.

But England refused to give him up. In March , she went with Graner and another soldier to Virginia Beach. During the trip, Graner took pictures of himself having anal sex with England. He also photographed her placing her nipple in the ear of the other soldier, who was passed out in a hotel room. Soon, it became their new game: Whenever Graner asked her to, England would strike a pose. She said, 'Guys like that. I just wanted to make him happy. The sexual stuff, the way he put her in those positions, that was his way of saying, 'Let's see what I can make you do.

After the Virginia Beach expedition, England and Graner rented a car and drove to eastern Kentucky, where her parents and grandfather were turkey hunting in Daniel Boone National Forest. Sitting between Graner and her parents at a picnic table, England asked Graner to share some scenic pictures from their trip to Virginia Beach.

Graner handed an envelope to England's father, who opened it and scanned the images, then handed them to Terrie. They showed nudity and sexual scenes. Apparently, Graner had given them the wrong vacation shots. It's early afternoon. England looks out the prison window at a grassy area bathed in Southern California sunlight.

Two people are sitting outside at a table. A golden retriever lies nearby on the lawn. We start them at eight weeks, and we train them to help the handicapped. They work in nursing homes, or help deaf people. Some of the dogs live with people who have panic attacks. The dog knows beforehand that a panic attack is coming on, and they can make a signal so the person can get their medication before it's too late. When she describes the dogs, England's face lights up.

Her mom, Terrie, has two cats, Sadie and Piggy. Until she gave birth to her daughter, Jessie had three. As kids, she and England used to watch Where the Red Fern Grows , a film based on a Wilson Rawls novel about a year-old and his two hunting dogs in the Ozarks during the Depression. The video still sits on a shelf in her parents' trailer. Darby, were deployed for duty in Iraq. The first stop: the Hilla camp, 58 miles south of Baghdad, where the army was training new Iraqi police officers.

The American forces took up residence in an abandoned date-processing factory, a big, open space, like an airplane hangar, but screaming hot and full of bird shit. Not long into their stay, two of the soldiers appeared at the base one day with animal carcasses. They'd found a dead goat and a dead cat somewhere and started slicing them up. Someone took a photo of a soldier pretending to have sex with the goat's head.

For several weeks, the decaying animal heads provided entertainment for the soldiers. Some soldiers put a cigarette in the cat's mouth," she says. The soldiers stashed the severed heads in their rooms. During that time, Graner instigated another kind of amusement: sexually charged weekly theme parties in the barracks.

A Chem-Light is a light stick used by soldiers that's akin to a flashlight, containing hydrogen peroxide and a fluorescent dye packaged in a small plastic tube.

Break it open, and the stuff glows for hours. One night, Graner pulled his shorts down, poured the contents of a Chem-Light onto his penis, and walked around naked. In October , the soldiers set aside their games and headed for their next assignment: Abu Ghraib. Janis Karpinski remembers the day England arrived at Abu Ghraib in It didn't hurt them, but it was a real 'welcome to Baghdad' moment. Karpinski greeted them. She's small, you know. Not assertive or aggressive. Honestly, she was young and innocent.

I know those words don't seem to apply to the pictures she was in. But when I touched her, I felt fear. England arrived in the thick of intense fighting. Insurgents launched mortar attacks at night. During the day, snipers trained their weapons on guards. In between, prisoners threatened to riot, walking in circles, chanting in protest. England worked in a processing office. She had no real business being in Tier 1A, where Graner worked, the wing of the prison where suspected insurgents were held.

But she'd slip over there at 10 p. It's intentional on his part. And naive on hers. Graner is a big, hunky guy. He can probably put his arms around England and still touch his shoulders. Does she feel safe with him? And all she has to do is be sexually wild with him. And pose for more pictures.

In a supply room, Graner takes a shot of England performing oral sex. England adds a flourish for the photos: a thumbs-up sign. In another photo, England is standing near a detainee, Hayder Sabbar Abd, a year-old taxi driver, as he is being made to simulate masturbation. Again, she gives a thumbs-up. Why did she let Graner take all those pictures? Wasn't she afraid he'd show them to people? He kept a camera in his cargo pocket. He was always taking his camera out. Sometimes he took the pictures for himself.

Sometimes he took them for documentation. According to Frederick, who was deposed during the military trial, "[Graner] always talked about being in Desert Storm, and the things he saw and did, and he had no way to prove these things happened. So this time around, he said he was going to take pictures to take back home as proof.

England remembers one detainee, "Gus. Gus was a "small man weighing approximately pounds," according to government documents. At this point Ambuhl was seeing another soldier in the company and the two of them, with England and Graner, effectively double dated.

I say Ambuhl was smart to keep herself out of most of the photos. England snaps: "She didn't plan that. It just happened. She wasn't clever. She's a pothead. She was just there. She wasn't in a lot of photos because she didn't want to be.

She would just walk away. Damned good thing! When you were in Abu Ghraib, you shoulda cut 'em all off. Why didn't she walk away from the photos? But he was so persistent. Go on! Just for me! If you loved me, you'd do it. I'm like, gee, OK just take the damned picture. There were other pictures Graner took, of him having anal sex with her, of her simulating sex with a drunk, passed out soldier. She says he wasn't ever violent, just manipulative. I always aim to please.

They said that one of the reasons Graner easily intimidated me was because I saw him as an authority figure. So I was really compliant. Her mother was furious that England was naive enough to have been influenced by Graner.

That's gone. The whole thing with me totally destroyed that. She looks sulky. I mean for real, she reacted like it was happening to her. She was, like, you don't know how I feel. I said, 'How d'you think I feel? Her father, 49, hasn't spoken publicly. But he took his feelings out in another way and we won't go there. She starts laughing. He pretty much broke up a year marriage. He never hit her after she beat the hell out of him.

She took a baseball bat to him and he caught it and took it, but he never hit her. They got divorced - "Roy was my mum's lawyer" - but are back together again now. What's the atmosphere like in the trailer? England sighs. It was only during Graner's trial that England found out that all along he had been two-timing her with Ambuhl. The two of them are now married. Graner recently asked for a DNA test to prove that Lynndie's son is his, having always denied it.

I'll get visitation rights. Graner was sentenced to 10 years. When she was serving her own sentence, did it change her view of how she'd treated the prisoners in Iraq?

Did she feel more sympathy for them? She shakes her head. Thinking back I don't want to say I matured more, but I realised that I was so naive and trusting. But what happens in war, happens. It just happened to be photographed and come out.

Of course, a lot of people said if you guys had just shut up or killed them, there wouldn't have been any trouble. I could think of it like that, but I mean, I don't even know how to describe it. They were the enemy. I don't want to say they deserved what they got, but they This is my problem. I can't think of words. England was told by a psychologist that she is a "visual", not a "verbal" person, and has a heightened "visual analytical system".

Maybe kids in the US have this ability. That's one of the reasons I was so good at the chicken plant, coz it's so visual. You're looking for bruises, or feathers or blood. That's why I moved up so quick. I was good with the visual stuff. Hand-eye coordination. Yet his efforts to help people in Pennsylvania and atone for his past offer little solace to those who were subjected to the abuse at the prison.

Many of them say they're still feeling the effects of their injuries. Ali al-Qaisi, who became known as the "hooded man" the name refers to the image of a hooded prisoner standing on a box , said in a video posted on Twitter : "It crushed our psyches. Sivits is right that the country did change after Abu Ghraib. Torture was banned in , shortly after President Barack Obama took office. Military interrogations were restricted and "black site" prisons, CIA-run facilities where detainees were subjected to harsh interrogations, shut down.

A new legal framework was created so that perpetrators, whether they worked for the government or a military contractor, could be more easily held accountable. Yet human-rights advocates say that despite the changes in law and government policy, people are now more accepting of the idea of torture than they were in the past.

The Abu Ghraib photos were shocking but over time outrage faded. Despite widespread rejection of those images, a "disturbing number" of voters later said yes when asked if torture was ever justified, says Katherine Hawkins, an investigator who works for the Project on Government Oversight. One recent poll suggests two-thirds of Americans think torture can be justified.

She and others believe that Abu Ghraib is more than a dark chapter in the nation's past. During the campaign, Donald Trump said that if he were elected president he would bring back waterboarding, an interrogation technique that's banned by federal law, as well as methods that were "a hell of a lot worse" than waterboarding.

He shifted his position after the election, saying he would defer to Defence Secretary James Mattis, who has said torture was a bad idea.

But the new national security adviser, John Bolton, has previously said that Americans should have the full range of interrogation methods available to them - and that he's open to the possibility of waterboarding in order to get information from someone. Trump's nominee for CIA director, Gina Haspel, once oversaw a black site, and human-rights activists say she is not suitable for the role of director because of her role in the harsh interrogation programme under the Bush administration.

She said during her confirmation process she would not re-start the harsh interrogation programme and conceded it was wrong. But it will likely not stop her being confirmed later this month. Nearly a decade and a half after the scandal, Mora says he's not sure people in the US have learned lessons in humility, the kind that Sivits describes.

Mora reminds me that the president and many political leaders say that they support the use of torture. The laws against torture remain in place. But Mora says he worries that if Americans engage in another full-scale war like the one in Iraq, they'll resort to torture again. Image source, Nubar Alexanian. Sivits looked for work in Martinsburg, where he lived after serving time in prison. A Hyndman native, Robert Clites remembers Sivits as a "courteous kid".

Image source, Jana Birchum. Charles Graner, centre, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in the abuse. More on Abu Ghraib.

This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. Photographing former prisoners at Abu Ghraib. At the prison, Lynndie England held a detainee on a leash.

Image source, Getty Images. Abu Ghraib image used by protesters in Baghdad. Image source, Chris Bartlett. After the scandal, Ali al-Qaisi posed for a formal portrait of himself.

Alberto Mora tried to stop the harsh interrogation programme - and torture.