Thursday, June 11, 2009

Rape Case Highlights Arbitration Debate

Jamie Leigh Jones

Jamie Leigh Jones, in the foreground, and another former Halliburton employee, Tracy Barker, participated in a news conference on Capitol Hill in December 2007. Jones, who says she was raped repeatedly by co-workers, has become one of the nation's leading arbitration reform advocates. Getty Images

All Things Considered, June 9, 2009 · 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.

"Apparently, he knew he was beyond the reach of any jurisdiction, so he was still brazen enough to be there," she says.

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.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105153315

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