Jezebel: jamie leigh jones

Justice For All

Megan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:40:00 EDT

Jamie Leigh Jones, who was gang raped in Iraq by an unknown number of co-workers, is suing for the right to sue their mutual employer, as the Justice Department won't investigate and she's covered by an arbitration clause. [NPR, YouTube]

When Jamie Leigh Jones was brutally gang...

Megan — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:45:39 EDT

When Jamie Leigh Jones was brutally gang raped by her co-workers in Iraq and then held against her will for several days in a shipping container to prevent her from reporting the rape, she was able to get free by convincing a sympathetic co-worker that hadn't raped her to loan her his personal cell phone — or else who knows what might've happened to her. In response, her employer, KBR, has banned the use of personal cell phones by all of its employees in Iraq. What a bunch of sick fucks. [Think Progress]

Iraq Sexual Assault Victim: "I Felt Safer On The Convoys With The Army Than I Ever Did Working For KBR"

Jessica — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:30:00 EST

Jamie Leigh Jones, the 22-year-old who was gang-raped while working for KBR in Iraq, isn't the only female contractor to suffer under a culture of sexual harassment and subsequent intimidation. Today, the New York Times talks to three other women who were sexually abused in the Mideast by male colleagues while working for KBR, a former Halliburton subsidiary. Mary Beth Kineston, above left, who worked as a driver in Iraq for KBR, was sexually assaulted in 2004 by a male driver, and after she reported it to superiors...nothing happened. Then she was assaulted again, this time by a different KBR employee, and, after reporting it to superiors, she was fired. "I felt safer on the convoys with the army than I ever did working for KBR," says Kineston. "At least if you got in trouble on a convoy, you could radio the army, and they would come and help you out. But when I complained to KBR, they didn't do anything. I still have nightmares. They changed my life forever, and they got away with it."

Pamela Jones and Linda Lindsey are two other women who were abused while working for KBR abroad. Jones, who ended up winning her private arbitration against KBR, said "it was known that if you started complaining that you could lose your job...They give you an 800 number to report. But then they shoved it under the rug, and they told me I was a pest." In the years since another "pest," Jamie Leigh Jones, spoke out last year, 38 other women have come forward with allegations against the company.

There are no hard statistics on the number of sexual assaults on contractors working overseas, the Times reports, because no one in the government is tracking them. What's more, KBR requires its employees to sign waivers agreeing to settle disputes in private arbitration, circumventing the US judicial system entirely. Continues the paper, "the Bush administration has not offered to develop a coordinated response to the problem."

Limbo For U.S. Women Reporting Iraq Assaults [New York Times]
U.S. Women Reporting Rapes In Iraq Remain In Limbo [International Herald Tribune]

Earlier: Defense Contractors: If It Wasn't For Diplomatic Immunity-Protected Rape, They'd Never Get Laid
How The Halliburton Rape Cases Explain Everything We Think About
"What, Don't You Always End Up In Need Of Reconstructive Surgery After A Night Of Good Consensual Sex?"

Missing Marine Found Dead; Likely Murderer Missing

Jessica — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:30:00 EST

Brace yourself for this Monday morning tale of woe: the remains of 20-year-old Maria Lauterbach, the pregnant Marine who had been missing since before Christmas, have been found in the backyard of her accused rapist, fellow Marine Cesar Armando Laurean. The burnt body of Lauterbach and her unborn child were found in a makeshift grave on Saturday. (It is unclear if Lauterbach's pregnancy was a result of her alleged rape.) Laurean, who has since skipped Jacksonville, North Carolina, where he and Lauterbach both served at Camp Lejeune, admitted to burying Lauterbach, but claimed in a note that Lauterbach slit her own throat. Which would explain the blood splattered all over the walls of his house! Oh, by the way, this piece of shit was also married. His wife, reports CBS News, is said to be "heartbroken".

Lauterbach filed the rape charges against Laurean (pictured) in April, and according to the Washington Post, Maria was harassed so badly in the meantime by her fellow Marines that she had to move off-base. Neither Lauterbach nor Laurean was reassigned to a different base after these charges were filed, because, according to military authorities, they were on "friendly terms" and Maria was ostensibly protected by a military order issued in May and renewed three times since then.

As has been reported before 20% of female veterans who seek care from the VA hospital showed symptoms of military sexual trauma. CBS News notes that there have been "complaints from female service members that the male-dominated chain of command did not take their allegations seriously," and the reticence of the Department of Defense to get involved in the Jamie Leigh Jones rape case further implies that the U.S. military does not care about the safety of the women in its employ.

Laurean is currently still missing, and though there have been sightings of him in Louisiana, none have been confirmed. Doddering local sheriff, Ed Brown, who, when Maria first went missing, implied that she had simply run away, had this to say about Laurean when asked what the Marine was capable of: ""Based on what I saw in that grave, anything."

Urgency Of Search For Marine Questioned [Washington Post]
Possible Sighting Of Marine Murder Suspect [CBS News]
No 'Confirmed Sightings' Of Suspect In Marine's Killing [CNN]

Earlier:
Mom Of Missing, Pregnant Marine Says She Was Victim Of Sexual Assault By A Superior
What Did Missing Marine Maria Lauterbach Witness Before She Mysteriously Vanished?
DoD To Jamie Leigh Jones: You're On Your Own, Sweetie

DoD To Jamie Leigh Jones: You're On Your Own, Sweetie

Jessica — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 09:30:00 EST

Jamie Leigh Jones, the administrative assistant for former Halliburton subsidiary KBR who says she was brutally gang raped and then locked in a small trailer by her KBR co-workers while working in Iraq, will not be getting any support from the Department of Defense regarding her attempt to sue KBR in civil court. Yesterday, the office of DoD Inspector General Claude Kicklighter has released the following statement to Florida Senator Bill Nelson, who is working on behalf of Jones: "[T]he U.S. Justice Department has issued a statement that they are investigating the allegations. No further investigation by this agency into the allegations made by [Jones] is warranted." Nelson's office, as well as Jones's lawyers, are predictably unsatisfied with this. Kicklighter's office did, however, say the were willing to investigate certain aspects of Jones's case, like the "whether and why" of an Army doctor giving Jamie's rape kit back to her bosses at KBR instead of holding the evidence.

(Kicklighter's cronies say that the rape kit eventually ended up with State Department officials, though apparently not until after KBR had ample time to tamper with it. ABC News attempted to get to the bottom of the kit's whereabouts, but "An Army spokesman referred questions about the rape kit to the State Department, which declined to provide new information on the case.")

KBR still says that "the safety and security of all employees remains KBR's top priority." A commenter on ABC News' website sums up the situation pretty succinctly: "This 'alleged' rape happened on US Army turf. The Department of Defense should have a boot half way up someone's keister by now."

Pentagon Won't Probe KBR Rape Charges [ABC News]

Earlier: Defense Contractors: If It Wasn't For Diplomatic Immunity-Protected Rape, They'd Never Get Laid
"What, Don't You Always End Up In Need Of Reconstructive Surgery After A Night Of Good Consensual Sex?"

Female Iraq-War Vets Suffering Post-Traumatic Stress From Sexual Abuse

Jessica — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 17:20:00 EST

Meet Master Sgt. Cindy Rathbun. Her hair started falling out in clumps when she arrived in Iraq in September 2006, reports USA Today. This physical manifestation of wartime stress wasn't the only thing causing hair loss. You see, being in Iraq brought back the long suppressed pain for Rathbun of being raped by a superior early on in her military career. According to USA Today, "The VA says 20% of women seeking its care since 2002 showed symptoms of military sexual trauma, compared with 1.1% of male veterans." It's shades of Jamie Leigh Jones all over the place in Iraq and Afghanistan! The worst, for these women, seems to be what those in the military call "rape by rank," which is when men higher in the chain of command prey on the vulnerability of their underlings.

Explains Navy vet Lauren Bess, who was raped by a fellow sailor at a naval base in Florida: "In the military, they train you that your brother is there always for you...The person who hurt me was someone who was there for me." Bess didn't report the rape for fear that her career would be ruined. More women have been reporting rapes since 2005, when the Pentagon began a program that allowed rape victims to get medical help without beginning a criminal inquiry. Still, it seems that the majority of sexual assault goes unpunished.

Bess and Rathbun are both graduates of the Women's Trauma Recovery Program run by the Department of Veteran's Affairs in Menlo Park, California. And while both women seem to be "on the mend," they know that there are "thousands" of other female veterans not getting the mental help they need. We can only hope that the bravery of Bess, Rathbun, and Jamie Leigh Jones telling their stories about military/occupational rape will inspire those suffering in silence to speak out.

Mental Toll Of War Hitting Female Servicemembers [USA Today]

How The Halliburton Rape Cases Explain Everything We Think About

Moe — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:20:53 EST

"Is America establishing a culture of impunity among its contractors operating in areas of armed conflict?" That's the first line of a Harper's story on the Jamie Leigh Jones case — not to be brainfarted with the Jamie Lynn Spears case — now turning American attention to the problems created by outsourcing war to big companies. But take the last nine words away and you're left with pretty much everything that brings us the big horror hits on this site: culture of impunity. MySpace torture, Jeffrey Marsalis, Jeffrey Epstein, gray rape, the 19-year-old raped at Les Deux, the DrunkenStepfather...not gonna go on. It's probably a culture of impunity that emboldened Paul Janka to try and grope me the whole time I was in his apartment, and maybe I contributed to a culture of impunity when I blithely went about my business swatting him off and not, in the name of womanity, telling him off.

Maybe I should have left right then and there. I've always had a soft spot for impunity, ever since it gave me the uh "courage" to write my first hundred word sentence. On the other hand, the "fixing broken windows" people have a lot of fair points, too. Like the Harper's folks point out:

Human experience also teaches—since the first formation of human communities—that when the state fails to enforce order, to identify crimes as crimes and to punish them swiftly and certainly, crimes proliferate.

However, as they also point out:

We have a community of 180,000 contractors in Iraq...This community consists entirely neither of angels or devils, but of ordinary human beings, most of whom undoubtedly try to act honorably in fulfilling their duties.

Anyway so like, I wrestle with this. Quality vs. quantity, comedy vs. tragedy, pageviews vs. sanity, Victorian England vs. Kardashian US America; do you have any fucking clue what I'm talking about anymore? Yeah, neither do I. I should probably stop reading thought-provoking essays.

What the Jamie Leigh Jones Story Teaches Us [Harper's]
"What, Don't You Always End Up In Need Of Reconstructive Surgery After A Night Of Good Consensual Sex?"
Defense Contractors: If It Wasn't For Diplomatic Immunity-Protected Rape, They'd Never Get Laid

"I Was Told To Wear Those Clothes For Three Days To See If I Was Any Sort Of Temptation To The Male Species"

Moe — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:00:00 EST

I'm sorta cynical, but the allegations of the all these U.S. American victims of sex crimes in Iraq have gotten so incomprehensibly heinous, it's starting to sound, like a lawyer here points out, like "a bad joke." See, it isn't enough that Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped and then locked in a shipping container, or that a young Florida woman had her room keys made available to any fellow contractor who wished to break in and fuck her, which is why we now get to test our absurdity thresholds with the story of mom of five Tracy Barker. When a superior told her he'd protect her if only she slept with him, she called an ethics hotline, after which she was locked in her room for three days. Then when State Department translator Ali Mokhtare tried to rape her, an investigator for the State Department told her to wear the same clothes she was wearing the night of the attack to see if she was, you know, asking for it.

Luckily, you know, her kinda-matronly ensemble convinced the investigator to advocate prosecuting Mokhtare, but it wasn't so easy convincing the Justice Department...Here's her story from Friday's 20/20.The full interview is here.

This Week, We Learned How To Be On Top

Jessica — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:40:00 EST

Slut Machine faithfully live-blogged the lackluster Top Model finale.
Newly crowned ANTM winner Saleisha taught us that to be on top, you have to be up Tyra's bottom.
Janice Dickinson called Tyra's bottom fat.
You know who didn't teach us about going up the butt? Lame dudes in Cosmo.
But Cosmo did tell us about getting things stuck in uh, other uncomfortable places.
Speaking of uncomfortable places! We discussed stirrup etiquette.
We also went over necessary topics that make some people uncomfortable, including Michelle Obama's skin color, Jamie Leigh Jones's rape, and the murder of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez.
But we laughed over some hilarrrious pictures of drunk dudes!

Defense Contractors: If It Wasn't For Diplomatic Immunity-Protected Rape, They'd Never Get Laid

Jessica — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:00:00 EST

Jamie Leigh Jones, who will appear on 20/20 this week to discuss how she was gang-raped, imprisoned and threatened with the loss of her job while working as an administrative assistant for erstwhile Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root in Iraq two years ago, has started a foundation to help women like herself who are raped and/or harassed abroad by government contractors and others who have tricky legal status. How many women like that are there out here? Well, last January a Florida woman sued KB&R after being raped while in Iraq and under the company's employ. In a complaint we've excerpted after the jump, she contends her rapist stole a key to her apartment from a locker, which was unlocked because how else were the Halliburton boys supposed to coerce sex from their limited supply of female co-workers? She also maintains that her rapist he was so drunk he could barely stand.

(Drinking being, of course, in itself a violation of policy but a common theme running through pretty much every report of government contractor misdeeds in Iraq, especially those occurring as this did, right around the holidays.)

The Florida woman also maintains it was non-consensual sex, though Halliburton (apparently) internally determined it was consensual, while also protecting the identity of the alleged rapist from her, which is sort of doubly insulting if you think about it; not only are they alleging she consented to sex but they're alleging she consented to sex with someone she did not know.

The assailant continues to "move about freely." He has been neither reassigned nor punished in any way. Some screen shots of the plaintiff's filings against KB&R:

Earlier: "What, Don't You Always End Up In Need Of Reconstructive Surgery After A Night Of Good Consensual Sex?"