Book: Jessica Lynch was raped
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Jessica Lynch with Diane Sawyer, who interviewed her for ABC's "Primetime."
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PALESTINE, West Virginia (AP) -- The authorized biography of former prisoner of war Pfc. Jessica Lynch says she was raped by her Iraqi captors, a family spokesman said Thursday.
"The book does cover the subject," spokesman Stephen Goodwin told The Associated Press. "It's a very difficult subject."
The book -- "I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story" -- is being released by Knopf publishing on Tuesday, Veterans Day. Reporter Rick Bragg, who wrote the book, tells Lynch's story.
Medical records cited in the book indicate that she was raped, the Daily News of New York reported in its Thursday editions. Officials have said Lynch has no memory of her ordeal.
"Jessi lost three hours. She lost them in the snapping bones, in the crash of the Humvee, in the torment her enemies inflicted on her after she was pulled from it," writes Bragg, according to the Daily News, which obtained a copy of the book.
"The records do not tell whether her captors assaulted her almost lifeless, broken body after she was lifted from the wreckage, or if they assaulted her and then broke her bones into splinters until she was almost dead," Bragg continues.
On ABC's "Good Morning America" host Diane Sawyer also gave details of the contents.
"The book does indeed cite some intelligence reports that she was treated brutally and a medical record which says, in the book, that she was a victim of a sodomizing rape," Sawyer said.
In confirming the reports, family spokesman Goodwin told the AP: "It's important to tell the story and let it be known, but she's not going to talk about it any more."
Another family representative said it was unfortunate attention was being focused on one incident.
"The complete story of her capture is a very painful one for Jessica," family spokeswoman Aly Goodwin Gregg told the AP. "However, she felt it was important to tell her story so that people fully understand the atrocities of war. But her story is more than just one incident."
Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards would not elaborate, telling The Associated Press that it was "just one chapter in a vivid story of a soldier's life."
Bragg declined to comment to the AP.
Sawyer's interview with Lynch will air Tuesday in a special edition of ABC's "Primetime."
Sawyer also addressed reports that Lynch's book casts doubt on the claim of an Iraqi lawyer, Muhammad al-Rehaief, that he helped U.S. Marines rescue Lynch.
"She says that he may indeed have helped her," Sawyer said. "If he did, she's grateful, but she simply does not remember him and she remembers most everybody that she spent time with during her hospital captivity."
Lynch, 20, was shipped to Kuwait in January with the 507th Maintenance Company. She was captured March 23 after her convoy was ambushed in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. She was rescued from an Iraqi hospital April 1 by U.S. forces.
She plans to marry Army Sgt. Ruben Contreras in June.
Bragg has written several books, including the memoir "All Over but the Shoutin'," and won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 while at The New York Times. He resigned from the Times in May after the newspaper suspended him over a story that carried his byline but was reported largely by a freelancer.
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