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| Born: July 27, 1985 Missouri Died: July 19, 2005 Balad, Iraq |
My daughter was beaten, raped, murdered, set on fire and
then they tried to burn her tent down with her body in it; and your evidence
says that. So it will be a cold day in hell before I stop, and I mean that with
all my heart.
John Johnson ~ Military veteran and father of Lavena
Johnson
LaVena Johnson was a Private First Class in the United
States Army. She became the first female soldier in Missouri to die in the Iraqi invasion,
but not the way you would think. Her death was officially ruled a suicide,
but her autopsy results and other evidence have made it clear she was
raped and murdered. Despite copious amounts of evidence that a horrible crime
had been committed, the United States Army ruled her death a suicide and
refuses to investigate.
The following is taking in large part from an excellent
article by Elizabeth
Bernard Higgs. I liked her telling of the story
and excerpt portions of it here.
According to the U.S. Department of Defense, Private
LaVena Lynn Johnson killed herself on July 19, 2005, eight days before her
twentieth birthday. Exactly how did she end her life? She punched herself in
the face hard enough to blacken her eyes, break her nose, and knock her front
teeth loose. She douched with an acid solution after mutilating her genital
area. She poured a combustible liquid on herself and set it afire. She then
shot herself in the head. Despite this massive self-inflicted trauma, she
somehow managed to drag her then fully clothed body into the tent of a KBR
contractor, leaving a trail of blood along the way and set the tent ablaze in a
failed attempt to cover up her crimes against herself.
In reality, LaVena Johnson was raped, beaten, and murdered
by someone on a military base in Balad , Iraq
When LaVena’s body was returned to her parents, however, her
father, Dr. John Johnson, immediately noticed that her nose was broken and her
lip was torn. He was surprised to discover that her gloves were glued to her
hands (as it turns out, to hide burns). As a former military man himself, he
also recognized that the exit wound from the bullet could not possibly have
come from the weapon the military claimed LaVena used to kill herself. He knew
then that the Army was lying to him, that his daughter had been murdered. He
made these discoveries eight years ago. Today, the Army is still lying
to him, and to us.
After filing a FOIA request for release of a CD-ROM
contained in LaVena’s file but withheld from the family for over two
years, and under added pressure from a congressman, the Army finally gave
the Johnsons the CD. On it they found horrific photographs from the
autopsy that clearly showed the extent of their daughter’s injuries. It
proved that the original black and white photos of LaVena’s body
originally sent to them had been doctored. Also on the disk were damning
sketches of the crime scene that gave her parents further information
contradicting the Army’s statements.
Listen to NPR Tell
Me More interview with her father recently and then become part of
advocacy efforts on behalf of Lavena and her family. That advocacy needs
to grow in momentum and volume. A vile injustice has been done and there
should be an accounting. Any reasonable person reviewing the facts will agree.
So the issue is really what can we do to raise the volume on this even further?
How do we make an effective demand for accountability in this case? Reread the
statement from Lavena's father at the top of this page. Let us match his
determination.
