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,” she says. “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.” 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.
