Woman allegedly raped in Iraq sued by defense contractor KBR

Source: Raw Story
By Eric W. Dolan

Defense contractor KBR has filed a lawsuit against Jamie Leigh Jones, a former employee who sued the company in 2007 after allegedly being drugged and raped by a group of co-workers in Iraq.

The lawsuit seeks more than $2 million to cover their legal fees, and accuses her of making fabricated and frivolous claims, according to the Wall Street Journal.

A Houston jury deliberated for more than 10 hours before deciding there was not enough evidence against the defendants.

“They have beaten us and now they are attempting to crush us,” her lawyer, Todd Kelly, told the Wall Street Journal. “This is an attempt by KBR to chill other people from bringing claims against them.”

Jones had filed suit against KBR, its former parent company Halliburton, and former co-workers. All parties involved denied the allegations and the co-workers insisted the sex had been consensual.

More at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/23/woman-allegedly-raped-in-iraq-sued-by-defense-contractor-kbr/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1801149&mesg_id=1801149

Woman turns out to be a false accuser. See the Mother Jones article linked in that discussion. She ought to be prosecuted for the fraud she committed in addition to covering the legal expenses KBR (ptooey!) incurred as a result of her fraud.

* edited to replace incorrect link

Powerful people can and do sometimes commit rape.

Please read this article:

A Reporter at Large
The Invisible Army

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/06/06/110606fa_fact_stillman?currentPage=1

(snip)

The expansion of private-security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known. But armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases, eat at meagre chow halls, and host dance parties featuring Nepalese romance ballads and Ugandan church songs. A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law.

The wars’ foreign workers are known, in military parlance, as “third-country nationals,” or T.C.N.s. Many of them recount having been robbed of wages, injured without compensation, subjected to sexual assault, and held in conditions resembling indentured servitude by their subcontractor bosses. Previously unreleased contractor memos, hundreds of interviews, and government documents I obtained during a yearlong investigation confirm many of these claims and reveal other grounds for concern. Widespread mistreatment even led to a series of food riots in Pentagon subcontractor camps, some involving more than a thousand workers.

(more at link)