Marie Claire magazine lands an interesting coup in their November issue: The first interview with Lynndie England, the young private made famous for her role in the Abu Ghraib scandal and ever-recognizable for her thurmbs-up image next to brutalized, humiliated prisoners, since she was sentenced to three years in prison in September 2005. England had had no visitors since beginning her sentence, including from her son, Carter, fathered by Abu Ghraib ringleader Private Charles Graner to whom England was once engaged but from whom she is now estranged. Reporter Tara McKelvey sought out England's family, showing up at a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia and convincing England's mother and sister to travel with her to the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in San Diego to see Lynndie for the first time in a year.
McKelvey's interview is a sympathetic one, depicting England as a caring mother and resolute about carrying on after becoming the poster girl for one of the worst national scandals in recent memory (literally - the image of her with the thumbs up is only a hair less iconic than the shot of her holidng a leash around the neck of a prone prisoner, and she's also featured with Graner in the notorious 'pyramid' shots wherein naked prisoners were forced into a human pyramid formation at Graner's instigation). According to McKelvey's piece, England claims that: