To Profit-Driven Contractors: All Rape Cases Must Go Before the Law, Period

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/143326/to_profit-driven_contractors%3A_all_rape_cases_must_go_before_the_law%2C_period/#more

To Profit-Driven Contractors: All Rape Cases Must Go Before the Law, Period
Posted by Sady Doyle, Comment Is Free at 1:30 PM on October 16, 2009.

The horrifying case of Jamie Leigh Jones, who was allegedly gang raped in Iraq shows how corporate interests take priority over human life.


Say, here's a concept: if you act to keep violent criminals out of jail, you are probably not working in your country's best interests, and shouldn't be called upon to defend it. It's a notion that was passed into law recently, with U.S. senator Al Franken's amendment to the defense appropriations bill stating that military contractors which prohibit their employees from taking rape and sexual assault cases to court would not receive funding or contracts from the U.S. government.

The impetus for the bill -- and the resistance against it -- sheds light on how rape can be excused or minimized and how the interests of corporations can take priority over human life.

In Baghdad in 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones claims, she was gang-raped by her colleagues at KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton. Her injuries, including torn pectoral muscles, tearing of her vagina and anus and ruptured breast implants, were confirmed by a physician, who said they were consistent with rape. He then handed the rape kit over to her employer, KBR. And KBR, according to Jones, locked her in a storage container, posted an armed guard outside of her door and denied her food and water.

The rape kit given to KBR disappeared, not to be seen again until 2007. When it resurfaced, it was missing doctors' notes and photographs -- which, along with the fact that Jones was drugged and could identify only one of her assailants, effectively annihilated her chances in a criminal case. KBR also denied her the right to take them even to a civil court, saying that what had been done to her was a mere "personal injury in the workplace," and could -- according to her contract -- be resolved only by arbitration.

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Now, thanks to Franken's amendment, If Halliburton and KBR continue to maintain policies that require arbitration in the case of violent crimes and discrimination, they will lose their government contracts. But that requires the people who are hurt or discriminated against to report the crimes in the first place.

Consider: Jones only got out of that storage container because she was able to get a mobile phone from a guard and called her father. KBR recently banned employee use of mobile phones.

Just corporate policy, of course. Just business.

It's not just the rape but abduction and a bunch of other crimes...ones that would surely draw decades behind bars if anyone without the political pull would get. It's disgusting there are rushpublicans who would not just look the other way but vote to enable these scum to avoid any prosecution. The money lining their pockets from Blackwater and the other contractors blinds them to any sense of humanity or compassion.

What are they afraid of? They won't get a steady flow of mercenaries to work their dirty wars if they aren't allowed to kill, rape and pillage at will? Or is it that women who enter this cold blooded world are expected to be used and abused and shut up?

For our own sakes...for our own dignity and honor, these slime must be prosecuted and anyone who thinks otherwise deserves to be ridiculed. The fact this happened in the first place shows our "civilization" isn't any more advanced than a the lowest most primitive society.

She was on one of the shows with her lawyer explaining just exactly the extent of the damages that had occurred. What a nightmare. I can't imagine how many therapists and drugs she must be on to cope with the brutality of her attackers.