One Soldier's Unlikely Act
Family Fears for Man Who Reported Iraqi Prisoner Abuse
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 6, 2004; Page A16
WINDBER, Pa. -- When reports this week named Spec. Joseph M. Darby as the soldier who sounded the alarm on abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad, his family was both proud and anxious.
"The news has been using the word 'whistleblower,' which to me sounds like a bad thing," said Maxine Carroll, Darby's sister-in-law and the family's spokeswoman. "I'm sure he wrestled with himself and decided to take the high road.
"We're hoping they put him somewhere safe."
According to a report in this week's New Yorker, Darby, a reservist in the 372nd Military Police Company, placed an anonymous note under the door of a superior, describing incidents of sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi detainees by some members of the unit that, documented by hundreds of explicit photographs, have shocked the world. He later came forward with a sworn statement.
As the families and friends of the Cumberland, Md.-based unit struggle to fathom the evidence, those who knew Darby before he enlisted wondered why he, more hothead than hero, came forward.
When news of his deed filtered through southwest Pennsylvania's mountain hollows to his high school home of Jenners, "I thought, 'That don't sound like Joe,' " said Doug Ashbrook, Darby's friend during their days at North Star High School in nearby Boswell. Then he remembered Darby in the high school bathroom, punching out paper towel dispensers.
"When he got mad at somebody, he wouldn't hit out at them -- he'd go bust something up," said Ashbrook, 24. "He had this temper, and that might have been the thing."
"Like the rest of us might, I thought maybe he'd just turn and forget about" the prisoner abuse, Ashbrook said. "Maybe I'd do the same. You just never know."
Darby's family moved a lot, but never far. In the mid-1990s, the family settled into a cream-colored clapboard duplex in Jenners, a tiny coal town in a region of rolling hills, exhausted strip mines and long-gone factory jobs. They had even less money than most; Darby lived with his stepfather, Dale, a disabled former truck driver, and mother, Margaret, who stayed home with his toddler brother, Montana. After school he worked the night shift at Wendy's to help out.
Gilbert Reffner, who lives across the street, remembers slipping a Christmas card with a few dollars inside under the door one year. He recalled the gesture when told about reports that Darby had slipped a missive of his own under the door of a superior in Baghdad. It was Darby's upbringing, Reffner said, that inspired the act.
"He didn't fit in with the whole crowd because he didn't have a lot of material things, fancy clothes or a car," said Reffner, 50. Darby's stepfather, who died several years ago, was a former Marine, neighbors say, who taught old-school manners to his son. He was "respectful, brought up the proper way," Reffner said.
Most evenings, Darby would cut through Reffner's back yard to visit Christina Vaillancourt, whose family lived on Short Street. The pair attended North Star High: Darby, a full-faced sophomore with shaggy, bowl-cut brown hair, beams out from the pages of the 1995 Polaris, the school's yearbook. He was a tackle for the North Star Cougars and was active in the Future Farmers of America chapter at Somerset County Vocational and Technical High School, which he attended part-time.
When they first met, "he was very sweet and kind of shy," Vaillancourt said. She recalled a benefit dance Darby organized to raise money for the family of a friend whose father died of a heart attack.
She got acquainted with Darby's temper one afternoon on the school bus, when a fellow student insulted him. "He just started pounding on the guy," she said.
By their senior year, the two grew apart, and Darby began dating other girls, she said. But he remained in touch, even after he married Bernadette Mains, a fellow student.
One evening, Darby called his former girlfriend to say he was headed to Iraq. "He was nervous about going to Iraq," recalled Vaillancourt, who has since married and lives in Maine. "He was homesick and afraid for his life.
"I'm proud of him for what he did."
Ashbrook and Darby often fished for catfish or hunted mushrooms in the woods around Jenners. Darby introduced his friend to Vaillancourt's sister, Monica, whom Ashbrook plans to marry next year.
"Joe was ornery like the rest of us," Ashbrook said, only more so. Occasionally, he recalled, something -- a slight, a school problem, another disappointment -- would anger Darby, who "broke so many of those towel dispensers I think he paid for one once a month," he said.
About the time Darby joined the service, his family moved out of Jenners. He has not contacted them since news of the abuse broke, Carroll said.
Darby's wife, Bernadette, has stopped talking to the media, except to relay a statement that she's proud of her husband. Carroll said the family hopes Darby's good deed will earn him a speedy return. They're also afraid, she said, of a backlash from families whose relatives, also in the 372nd, are accused of the abuse. "We're not passing judgment on the people who did this," she said.
Late Tuesday night, Jennifer Pettitt, Christina Vaillancourt's mother, swept the floor during her shift at Dunkin' Donuts in Somerset. She grew close to Darby while he dated her daughter and was the last person in Jenners to hear from him.
One evening last spring, he called her from Iraq, just wanting to talk. Could he have wanted to share what he'd been seeing or ask advice? Pettitt doesn't know -- it seemed odd to be talking to her daughter's former boyfriend, so she cut the conversation short.
"He sounded lonesome," she said. Now she worries that he's more lonesome than ever.
Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.
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