Pfc. LaVena Johnson would have turned 28 years old on July 26. Sadly, we now have to also acknowledge the anniversary of her death on July 19, 2005. LaVena was just shy of her 20th birthday when her parents got word from the U.S. Army about her purported “suicide.”
When U.S. Senate hearings on military rape were taking place on Capitol Hill recently, I would shout out LaVena’s name as my way of interjecting her story in the proceedings.
The honor student enlisted in the U.S. Army immediately following graduation from high school. She was deployed to Iraq and was found dead there eight weeks later.
LaVena became the first female soldier in Missouri to die in the Iraqi invasion. It was not a distinction she was looking for when she decided to follow her dad’s footsteps into the military.
It became painfully clear from autopsy photos that this was no suicide. It would have been impossible for LaVena to knock out her own teeth, dislocate her shoulder, rape herself and then set her own body on fire.
Yet that was the Army ‘s story, and they were sticking to it.
Dr. John and Linda Johnson, the grief-stricken parents, have been on their own difficult journey to find the truth and get justice for their daughter. Their tenacity has brought worldwide media attention to their daughter’s case.
Dr. Johnson was the first to conduct his own investigation into the murder.
“My daughter was beaten, raped, murdered, set on fire and then they tried to burn her tent down with her body in it,” Dr. Johnson said. “So it will be a cold day in hell before I stop, and I mean that with all my heart.”
LaVena’s website, lavenajohnson.com/, and the advocacy group Color of Change generated thousands of signatures on a petition calling for a congressional investigation into her suspicious death.
The story caught the attention and support of retired Colonel Ann Wright, a feisty veteran who has seen her fair share of injustices in the military. In 2010, the documentary A Silent Truth was produced highlighting the many discrepancies in LaVena’s death. When it was screened in St. Louis, there was not a dry eye in the auditorium.
The energy and courage of the Johnsons helped to fuel the pressure to hold congressional hearings. A few months ago, the U.S. Senate held its first subcommittee panel on sexual assault in the military in over a decade. Testimony after testimony revealed “a pervasive culture of harassment and danger in which victims had little or no redress.”
On July 19, 2011 – the 6th anniversary of LaVena’s death – the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute chose the case for its Bauder College students to work on. Conclusion of their probe is pending.
Until citizens demand that the armed forces put processes in place that treat sexual assault as a legitimate crime and not as an “occupational hazard, ” then justice will continue to elude the young men and women serving in the armed forces.
