Bernadette Darby said she received a phone call from her husband, Spc. Joseph M. Darby, about three weeks ago, informing her that something was going to happen with his unit and that she shouldn't worry.

"He said he wasn't in any trouble and I shouldn't worry," said Darby by phone from her home in Cumberland, Md. "I asked him what was going on but he wouldn't tell me."

According to details of an Army report released yesterday, Darby, 24, a Somerset County native and member of the 372nd Military Police Company, was the one who alerted officers about the alleged torture of Iraqi prisoners of war by others in his Cresaptown, Md.-based unit, leading to criminal charges and possible court-martial of several soldiers.

Bernadette Darby, who along with her husband grew up in Somerset County, said she had heard of the incident on the news, but was not aware of her husband's role until a reporter from the Baltimore Sun phoned her yesterday.

"I was shocked and proud," said Darby. "I am behind him 100 percent. He felt something was wrong and I couldn't be more proud of him."

Darby's name emerged this weekend in an article by New Yorker writer Seymour M. Hersh, posted on the magazine's Web site. It detailed a report that Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba wrote in February that accused soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company of "sadistic" treatment of Iraqi prisoners, including physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

Six members of the 372nd are accused of a variety of acts, such as taking photos of prisoners being forced to engage in sex acts, using a dog to attack them and hooking them up to fake electrodes and telling them they could be electrocuted. Another eight soldiers from the unit face administrative charges.

In his New Yorker article, Hersh quotes from the partial transcript of a military hearing in which another witness, Special Agent Scott Bobeck of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, testifies that Darby saw photographs of naked prisoners and wrote an anonymous letter about the mistreatment, which he slipped under the investigators' door. He later gave a sworn statement.

"He felt very bad about it and thought it was very wrong," Bobeck said, according to The New Yorker.

Bernadette Darby said she and her husband met in Somerset County when they were both students at Somerset Vocational Technical School. They were married in April 1999 and have no children. They moved to Maryland about three years ago, and he has been deployed in Bosnia or Iraq for much of that time.