Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR

[wooderson]

Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR

Mind, before you jump to conclusions about money or how oppressed men are by sexual assault trials - her story is essentially corroborated by a Republican Congressman.

[Manedwolf]

OMG ABC news jumps, Haditha II, innit?

Wait, how did that turn out? Oh, that's right, they only reported on the accusation, not the resolution!

You know, you could wait for the verdict here, too, but...naaaah, more fun to assume that the government and all its contractors are doing an evil conspiracy.

[Perd Hapley]

I'm also glad that my taxes are funding KBR.  They're also funding Congress, the Federal Judiciary, the U.S. Military, the CIA, and the FBI.  All of which do naughty things at times. 

Wait, what's the point again? 

[wooderson]

What verdict, manedwolf? Their will be no criminal trial, and KBR's using it's hired guns to avoid any trial.

[De Selby]

The fact that the US government has not come down on this company like Zeus from the mountaintop is outrageous enough.

Who the heck is running the show out there in such a way that a bunch of apparently gainfully employed and non-thug Americans convince themselves that a gang rape is the thing to do on a weekend night?  There's no way to write this off as just "one of those things"-this is a sign of some extremely disturbing professional culture problems inside the work camps.

The problem with "Haditha I" was that such an atrocious crime happened, not that the news media reported it (Which they didn't until quite some time after it had happened).

[Matthew Carberry]

If that is, in fact, what happened you mean (though I don't find it hard to believe).

[Finch]

Hell, 385 million dollars of our tax money went to KBR for a contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide centers for "temporary detention and processing capabilities."

But you got nothing to worry about...

[CAnnoneer]

Wait, what's the point again? 

Precisely. If we start casting down whole corporations or gov organizations for the criminal actions of a few select individuals inside them, we'll soon be left with nothing.

For me, the litmus test of motivations is the proposed remedy. If a victim like that just wants the particular individuals imprisoned, then fine. But, if a tragedy like that becomes a vehicle of milking litigation money from the respective organization, then where is the surprise in the hushing response of the company? Methinks less litigation would make everybody safer and more justice would find its mark. Ironic but true.

[MechAg94]

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=3977702&page=1

This article caught my interest from the drudge report.  If it is true, it sounds like KBR could be in some trouble.  I am almost surprised this hasn't become a media circus.  I doubt KBR will get much sympathy.

I do think the title is misleading.  I don't see where the US or US military is really involved except as someone who helped. 
What is reminds me of is a few rumors I have heard about people having problems while working for cruise lines.  You are working for an international company outside the US and may or may not have US law enforcement protection.

By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD
Dec. 10, 2007

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Photos
Victim: Gang Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.

According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

[Len Budney]

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

If true, that's quite damning: since when is a rape kit turned over to the rapist?

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

damn   this is  a case where letting the local authorities handle it might work.  the muslims have a great punishment for rape

[Manedwolf]

damn   this is  a case where letting the local authorities handle it might work.  the muslims have a great punishment for rape

What, punishing the woman for tempting the men? That's the sharia version used by the extremists.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

i was thinking more of the lines of removing the instrument of assault from the attackers  it has the effect of   ecouraging good behavior in the rest

[MechAg94]

Yeah, the handing over of the kit to KBR security is something I didn't understand. 

Does the army even have jurisdiction to keep it or investigate this themselves?  Can the embassy take any jurisdiction? 
It would seem to me that it would either fall under the army or Iraqi law. 

[Creeping Incrementalism]

For me, the litmus test of motivations is the proposed remedy. If a victim like that just wants the particular individuals imprisoned, then fine. But, if a tragedy like that becomes a vehicle of milking litigation money from the respective organization, then where is the surprise in the hushing response of the company?

A job is an economic deal where you expect certain things from the employer, and the employer expects certain things from you.  No sexual harassment (let alone rape) is a standard deal in the U.S.  When the company allows something like that to happen, receiving compensation for it is totally appropriate and expected.  This woman isn't "milking" the company.  Though I think we should wait to hear more about the incident before being outraged that the gov't hasn't come down on KBR like "Zeus from the mountaintop".  I would go outside and look up before believing the mainstream media that the sky was blue.

[Len Budney]

Precisely. If we start casting down whole corporations or gov organizations for the criminal actions of a few select individuals inside them, we'll soon be left with nothing.

Yeah, if we turn on our overlords because some of them kill, steal and rape, we'll soon have no overlords at all. We can't have that now can we?

--Len.

[Manedwolf]

i was thinking more of the lines of removing the instrument of assault from the attackers  it has the effect of   ecouraging good behavior in the rest

I've never heard of that occurring. In Saudi Arabia, a raped woman was just sentenced to 90 lashes for having been alone in a car with unrelated men. When she objected, they increased it to 200 lashes.

[MechAg94]

I assume that was a Saudi woman.  I doubt an ex-pat would be given a hearing. 

[MechAg94]

No, it is more like you turning on your neighbor because your other neighbor did something bad.  I didn't know KBR was my overlord.   

[Paddy]

Precisely. If we start casting down whole corporations or gov organizations for the criminal actions of a few select individuals inside them, we'll soon be left with nothing.

And that's a problem, how......?

Where in the Constitution does it say the POTUS can have his own private army of thugs (employed by the State Department in order to avoid Defense Department accountability no less)?

[MechAg94]

The Civil Service Act? 

I guess people with Letter's of Marque wouldn't actually be working for the POTUS. 

I guess we should just expand the military so all those jobs can be done by service personnel. 

[MechAg94]

Riley, where are you connecting this with the administration or the US govt?  The only thing wrong a US govt person did was the doctor handing the rape kit over to KBR. 

IMO, this same thing could happen to a girl working for a cruise line or working as an ex-pat for KBR or other companies anywhere outside the US.  I am sort of surprised the state department didn't get the Iraqis involved.

[Paddy]

These thugs aren't working for the State Dept on behalf of the President (aka CIC, who is ultimately reponsible for his subordinates).  It's like we're becoming a banana republic run by a military strongman.

[SteveS]

i was thinking more of the lines of removing the instrument of assault from the attackers  it has the effect of   ecouraging good behavior in the rest

I've never heard of that occurring. In Saudi Arabia, a raped woman was just sentenced to 90 lashes for having been alone in a car with unrelated men. When she objected, they increased it to 200 lashes.

Dateline (or one of those news shows) had a story about a 17 year old boy that was raped in Dubai.  The courts were planning on charging him with having homosexual intercourse.

[Perd Hapley]

KBR aren't overlords.  Last I knew, they weren't a private army, either.  Are they doing security work, now?