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Ex-wife recalls her life with Abu Ghraib abuser
May. 5, 2005 - One night, Staci Morris awoke to find then husband Charles Graner holding a large knife to her throat and openly pondering whether to kill her. In subsequent days, he pretended nothing had happened.

"He's like my Hannibal Lecter, he really is. He's the monster in my life," said Morris, who has two teenage children from her 10-year marriage with Graner, the central figure in the Abu Ghraib abuse of Iraqi prisoners....

... Many of the abuse photos which badly damaged America's image abroad showed Iraqi men being sexually humiliated, such as being forced to masturbate and simulate fellatio. Asked how Graner might have thought to stack seven naked Iraqi prisoners into a human pyramid, Morris said: "He's obsessed with this kind of stuff."

"He is a sexual deviant," she said. "He was very sexually strange, into very strange things."

As their relationship was faltering, Graner twice set up covert video surveillance of Morris's bedroom - and then told her about it. On other occasions Graner recounted to guests invented tales about their sexual exploits, Morris said.

Yet the same man could be unusually charismatic and engaging, prompting a military superior at Abu Ghraib to describe Graner as a chameleon. Just weeks ago while in prison, Graner married another woman implicated in the scandal, Megan Ambuhl. She was also his lover in Iraq and pleaded guilty to abuse charges, but was not sentenced to prison....