No Day in Court For Halliburton Employee Raped by Co-Workers

This is the epitome of 21st Century military industrial legalistic doublespeak nightmare:

Jamie Leigh Jones was a 20-year-old Halliburton employee in 2005 when she was sent to work in Iraq. She'd been there just four days when she joined a small group of Halliburton firefighters outside her barracks at the end of the day. One of them gave her a drink. She took two sips, and Jones says that was the last thing she remembered.

"I woke up inside the barracks," she says. "It was actually inside my barrack room, and that's when I noticed I had been severely beaten and was actually naked."

Jones had been raped, repeatedly. By how many men, she's not sure. But she says one man was still naked and asleep in the room when she came to.
...
Jones was escorted by security to the company clinic for a rape examination. When the rape kit examination was done, the evidence was turned over to Halliburton security.

The young woman's breasts were so badly mauled that she is permanently disfigured. It has been four years since the attack, and despite the physical and circumstantial evidence, the Department of Justice has declined to investigate.
...
Heather Browne, director of communications at KBR, says that while the company can't speak to the facts since the case is ongoing, it denies any liability in the attack. And she argues that any dispute with Jones, even one involving charges of rape, must go to arbitration.

So Jones is now going to court seeking the right to sue. She has become one of the nation's leading arbitration reform advocates.

The powerful acid of corporatization has utterly eroded our basic legal rights. It took centuries of struggle and bloodshed to establish the legal tradition beginning with English common law, the Magna Carta and culminating in the U.S. Bill of Rights.

We are watching that legal framework vanish before our eyes.

Nat Wilson Turner June 9, 2009 - 10:42pm

Nat Wilson Turner's diary | printer friendly version |

( categories: Labor )

Halliburton needs to keep people in the company

who have an intuitive sense of their management philosophy. So they simply can't afford to fire known rapists. There must be a new generation to whom the old rapists can hand over the company in due course.

chalo June 10, 2009 - 6:26am

I listened to the NPR report on the radio

earlier today. Apart from dry-retching when listening to Ms Jones story, I was inspired by the courage she is showing.

Her statement can be found here.
__________________________________________________________________
The radio report went on to outline the small print in many contracts including credit card agreements that basically negate the right of a person to seek redress in the legal system.

A frightening development that I was not aware of.
______________________________________________________________

Interestingly Rep Senator Poe, whose office contacted the State Department to rescue Jones from Iraq says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones ivestigation. Poe told ABC News, "I think it is the responsibility of our government, the Justice Department and the State Department, when crimes occur against American citizens overseas in Iraq, contractors that are paid by the American public, that we pursue the criminal cases as best as we possibly can and that people are prosecuted."

It's a strange world we live in where clergy can be named, shamed and properly exposed brought into the public eye , but the anonymous employees of a multi-national corporation can brutalise and rape a fellow employee and get away with it.

graham June 10, 2009 - 7:33am

well said eom

Tina June 10, 2009 - 8:09am

Sylvia Plath

In the dour ages
Of drafty cells and draftier castles,
Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,

But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the overscrupulous
Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
Of God's city and Babylon's

Must wait, while here Suso's
Hand hones his tack and needles,
Scouraging to sores his own red sluices
For the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles
Of horsehair and lice his horny loins;
While there irate Cyrus
Squanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes
To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:
He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles
A girl could wade without wetting her shins.

Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains.

Joaquin June 10, 2009 - 8:49am

Important topic, good catch

Thanks for bringing this up. I hadn't heard anything about this since Democracy Now or PBS did a report on it awhile back. I wish I could see some signs of serious cultural push back on the aggregation and abuse of power by corps but it seems like they're still controlling the narratives at the national level. You'd think with the recent banking scandal/implosion we'd be reassessing the power, role, and scale of these entities but apparently not. I'm beginning to wonder what it will take to see the pendulum move the other way. One of the posters said here awhile back that America's OODA loop is broken. We don't seem overly concerned with fixing it either. : P

Thepanzer June 10, 2009 - 11:47am

Face one's accusers & due process

One might reflect on the "guilty until proven Innocent" mechanism of the Credit Bureaus.

And as for "facing one's accuser"....

Synoia June 10, 2009 - 1:09pm

Murdered in Green Zone: KBR Jim Kitterman as well

It is hard to say if murder or rape is really worse (at least with murder you get the benefit of not being aware of having been murdered, it seems). In any case it appears that longtime core KBR player Jim Kitterman was murdered just a week before getting out of the Green Zone. It seems that the final fortnight over there is really a risky one.

WayneMadsenReport.com, yeah sometimes its conspiracy-mongering (or getting fed gibberish by CIA people or whatever) but also Mr Madsen keeps very very close tabs on the people that have turned up dead over the years. This just happened a couple weeks ago. Kitterman almost certainly could have had evidence to put people away in prison.

This CTU entity also specializes in kidnapping half-American children from their foreign parents post-divorce, and has caused international incidents from these paramilitary Special Forces style ops for years.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20090610_5
earlier: http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20090608_4

June 10, 2009 -- UPDATE 1X. Iraq releasing five Americans detained in murder investigation of former KBR/Halliburton Iraq contractor Jim Kitterman

An Iraqi judge is dismissing charges brought against five American contractors in the May 22 slaying of American contractor Jim Kitterman, whose body was found blindfolded and bound in a SUV parked in the Green Zone of Baghdad. Before starting Janus Construction last year, Kitterman had worked for Dick Cheney's old firm Kellogg, Brown & Root/Halliburton and another connected to KBR/Halliburton contracts in Iraq and the Philippines, Peregrine Development International. According to CNN, the reasons for detentions of the Americans went from suspicion of involvement in the death of Kitterman to possessing unregistered weapons.

On June 9, 2009, WMR reported: "Four American employees of Corporate Training Unlimited (CTU) of Fayetteville, North Carolina, including its president, were arrested by Iraqi law enforcement authorities under a new U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that strips U.S. contractors of immunity under Iraqi law. A fifth American, who works for another firm was also arrested by the Iraqis in connections with Kitterman's death. According to CTU's website, 'In 2003, CTU provide PSD 'Personal Security Detail' service to Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR MER Baghdad) top executives.' According to the Fayetteville Observer, the same day that Kitterman's body was found another CTU contractor, Larry Young, was found dead in the Green Zone from what was 'suspected' to have been a rocket attack. CTU's president is Donald Feeney, Jr., and former Delta Force, was, according to the Fayetteville Observer, arrested along with his son, Donald Feeney III, and two other CTU employees, Micah Milligan and Mark Bridges. The fifth man, Jason Jones, is reported to have worked for 'another firm.'"

UPDATE 1X. WMR has confirmed with an informed source that Jim Kitterman was due to return to the United States prior to his assassination in the Green Zone, the only reported assassination carried out against an American in the heavily-fortified sector since the U.S. invasion of the country in 2003. Kitterman was called "indispensable" to the operations of the U.S. embassy located in the Green Zone. The release of the five American suspects came as the U.S. Congress-mandated U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting reported that more than $13 billion in contract costs in Iraq and Afghanistan are under question by government auditors and that some of the problems point to widespread fraud and corruption. The commission cited KBR/Halliburton as one of the worst offenders.

*****
earlier link
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20090608_4

[....] CTU was back in the news again in 1993 when CTU mercenaries, claiming to work for Sylvester Stallone's Carcolo film production company, lured a five year-old girl and her older step-sister away from their Icelandic mother as part of an elaborate hoax and were set to spirit them out of Iceland along with the five-year old's American father who had contracted with Feeney's CTU to conduct to kidnapping. The older girl was to be returned to her American father who was previously married to the same Icelandic mother. Both American fathers were ex-U.S. servicemen. The five-year old's parents had been divorced in 1991 and the older daughter's father had been divorced from her mother in 1986.

Arrested by Icelandic police at Keflavik International Airport were the elder Feeney, who was masquerading as Stallone's film director, and his American client James Grayson. The little girl was returned to her mother, who had been promised a role in the production of a Stallone movie and was slipped a knockout pill by Jacqueline Davis, who claimed to be Stallone's location manager and who was in cahoots with Judy, Feeney's wife. Davis and Judy Feeney were arrested by Luxembourg police after leaving Iceland. The Feeneys also used Swiss and German soil to perpetrate their kidnapping endeavor, an indication of what little regard the ex-Delta Force commando holds the laws of foreign nations from Iceland and Jordan to Iraq. CTU also snatched children away from the foreign ex-husbands of American mothers in Bangladesh, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia.
........

The Kitterman murder does not stop with CTU. Kitterman, before starting Janus Construction in 2008, worked for Peregrine Development International, a Kuwaiti-financed firm whose president is Dennis Wright, Kitterman's former boss. Kitterman was known to be an "expert" in Iraq and served, according to Wright in an e-mail to The Washington Post, "more days on the ground in Iraq than any other American." Kitterman had been a contractor in Iraq since 2003, the year of the U.S. invasion and occupation. Part of that time was spent by Kitterman working for Kellogg, Brown and Root.

The alibi that CTU president Feeney had been in the Philippines when Kitterman was murdered is also noteworthy. Last year, KGL Investment Company of Kuwait, was selected by Clark International Airport Corporation, with the blessing of the scandal-plagued Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to build a major air transportation logistics complex at the former U.S. Air Force base at Clark on the island of Luzon. The project is worth some $2 billion. Selected by KGL to develop the project was Peregrine, Kitterman's old firm. Part of the development work is the construction of storage facilities for the Malampaya gas field, northwest of Palawan island. The work was contracted to KBR/Halliburton in 2001. KGL maintains operations in Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.

--
Hongpong.com

HongPong June 10, 2009 - 1:17pm

Court Okays Halliburton Rape Trial

update on Jamie:

Tuesday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2 to 1 ruling, found her alleged injuries were not, in fact, in any way related to her employment and thus, not covered by the contract.

One of the judges who ruled in her favor, Rhesa Hawkins Barksdale, is a West Point grad, Vietnam vet, and one of the court's most conservative members, a sign, perhaps, of just how bad the facts are in this case. It's a big victory, but a bitter one that shows just how insidious mandatory arbitration is. It's taken Jones three years of litigation just to get to the point where she can finally sue the people who allegedly wronged her. It will be many more years before she has a shot at any real justice.

In the meantime, her case may bolster pending legislation that would ban mandatory arbitration clauses in employment and other consumer contracts.
hattip u/b

mother jones
thinkprogress

graham September 16, 2009 - 5:24pm

You have to wonder about the judge that voted against the Appeal

Judge Attila?

We need a NATION WIDE STRIKE for Real healthcare reform

Joaquin September 16, 2009 - 7:18pm

The decision

is online at Jones v Haliburton

The Appeals Court was not directly or indirectly deciding on the guilt or innocence of anybody, nor considered the ramification of the terrible assault suffered by Jamie Lee Jones at the hands of her attackers and by Haliburton in their efforts to cover up the incident - only whether her case was subject to an arbitration clause she'd signed as part of her employment contract with the company. The majority found that she was not in her normal workplace because the alleged rapes took place in her barracks after hours, thus the terms of her Haliburton contract were deemed inapplicable and so her case should NOT be settled as part their of inhouse mandatory arbitration, but subjected instead to the scrutiny of the law in court.

The dissenter basically found that her workplace was the Iraq war zone, all of it. She'd been sent there at Haliburton's expense and her barracks were supplied and paid for by the company. Therefore her complaint should fall under the restrictive arbitration terms of the employment contract she'd willingly signed. (This would also allow allow her rapists a continued free pass on their brutal assault.)

The court's decision in this case sets an interesting precedent and may have some far reaching consequences imo, if the the US ever does steel up and drag its contractee offenders and their employers who allegedly committed crimes in Iraq into criminal court.

Of course, in this case there is a single American victim who continues to suffer from her injuries and has the time, will and backing to pursue justice. In other cases, the US public is the victim but the government has so far shown no such determination.

Fundamentally, though, I can't accept the absurdity of any interpretation of an employment contract's mandatory arbitration clause that could basically serve to allow employees to engage in criminal acts against their co-workers without fear of consequences and with the full protection of their company.

Chickadee September 17, 2009 - 2:08pm

Its absurd

The question of someone being able to sign an arbitration pact that subsumes fundamental human rights and constitutional rights is insane; no judge in their right mind would consent to this. What? The judges all want to be out of a job?

We need a NATION WIDE STRIKE for Real healthcare reform

Joaquin September 17, 2009 - 2:39pm

The foundation for the argument

put forward by Brown and Root/KBR (Haliburton) was that Ms Jones rape and brutal assault constituted a personal injury arising in the workplace.

This young woman was drugged and gang raped by several drunk co-workers and so viciously physically assaulted she's required reconstructive surgery, then held for days, incommunicado, in a shipping container so that a rape test could not be performed.

It's taken over two years so far for arguments in her case to reach a point where her assailants can even be charged. The first four months of this process are documented here.

The original suit filed by Jones and her husband is available online here more fully describes the inciting event, the circumstances of her employment and the utter immorality of her employer.

The law is an ass.

On a side note, something else caught my eye. Having defined the Defendant Haliburton with its several subsidiaries subject to the complaint, "KBR conducts business throughout the state of Texas, the United States and Worldwide. KBR conducts business throughout the state of Texas and is thus amenable to jurisdiction in this state." Para 6 defines another named subsidiary Defendant as a Cayman Islands tax shelter set up by Haliburton.

Chickadee September 18, 2009 - 1:58am

Halliburton

In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury. Rather, a private arbitrator would decide Jones' case. In recent testimony before Congress, employment lawyer Cathy Ventrell-Monsees said that Halliburton won more than 80 percent of arbitration proceedings brought against it.

Chickadee September 18, 2009 - 2:45am

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No Day in Court For Halliburton Employee Raped by Co-Workers

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