Abu Ghraib scandal haunts W.Va. reservist

updated 12:34 p.m. ET June 29, 2009

KEYSER, W.Va. - More than two years since leaving her prison cell, the woman who became the grinning face of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal spends most of her days confined to the four walls of her home.

Former Army reservist Lynndie England hasn't landed a job in numerous tries: When one restaurant manager considered hiring her, other employees threatened to quit.

She doesn't like to travel: Strangers point and whisper, "That's her!"

In fact, she doesn't leave the house much at all, limiting her outings mostly to grocery runs.

"I don't have a social life. ... I sit at home all day."

She's tried dyeing her dark brown hair, wearing sunglasses and ball caps. She even thought about changing her name. But "it's my face that's always recognized," she says, "and I can't really change that."

'In a photo for a split second'
England hopes a biography released this month and a book tour starting in July will help rehabilitate an image indelibly associated with the plight of the mistreated prisoners.

It's difficult to forget the pictures that shocked millions in 2004: In one, she holds a restraint around a man's neck; in another, she's giving a thumbs-up and pointing at the genitals of naked, hooded men, a cigarette dangling from her mouth.

"They think that I was like this evil torturer. ... I wasn't," she says. "People don't realize I was just in a photo for a split second in time."

In an interview with The Associated Press to promote her biography, "Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs that Shocked the World," the 26-year-old England said she's paid her dues and repeatedly apologized.

While admitting she made some bad decisions, England says it wasn't her place to question the "softening-up" treatments sanctioned long before she arrived.

"We were just pawns," said England, who's appealing her conviction and has her next hearing in July. "People were just playing us."

A jury of five Army officers, however, rejected England's claims that she was only following orders and trying to please the father of her child, former Cpl. Charles Graner Jr., who's currently imprisoned for his role.

Christopher Graveline, the lead prosecutor at her trial and now an assistant federal prosecutor in Michigan, said England and the other defendants are free to present their side to the media.

"But they presented the same facts to the jury, and the jury rejected them," he said.

One of 11 soldiers found guilty
England was convicted of conspiracy, mistreating detainees and committing an indecent act, one of 11 soldiers found guilty of wrongdoing at Abu Ghraib.

Since April, when newly released memos revealed the Bush administration had sanctioned certain so-called "enhanced interrogation" tactics, some have called for pardons of soldiers like England — or at least acknowledgment that they were scapegoats for higher-ups.

Graveline rejects such calls. He and investigator Michael Clemens have their own book coming out in January, "The Secrets of Abu Ghraib Revealed: American Soldiers on Trial," which they say aims to correct misunderstanding and misinformation.

The detainees in the photos involving England, for example, were not suspected terrorists, Graveline says, but some of the thousands of "Iraqi-on-Iraqi criminals" at the massive prison. None of the men in the England photos was ever interrogated.

"The idea that she and her colleagues were working somehow for military intelligence is not supported by fact," he says.

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