MORE US JUSTICE FOR ABUSE VICTIMS: MORE JURIES FINDING "REASONABLE" DOUBT: MORE LESSONS FOR FEMINISTS IN WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND; KEEP DEFENDING THIS SICK JUSTICE SYSTEM USING THE MAN'S REASONING; SOONER OR LATER IT WILL BE YOUR TURN TO FACE "REASONABLE" PATRIARCHAL DOUBT.

Texas woman loses Iraq rape case against KBR

By PAUL J. WEBER and MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press   

Summary

A former KBR Inc. employee who said she was drugged and raped while working in Iraq lost her lawsuit against the military contractor Friday.

HOUSTON (AP) - A former KBR Inc. employee who said she was drugged and raped while working in Iraq lost her lawsuit against the military contractor Friday.

The jury of eight men and three women rejected Jamie Leigh Jones' claims a day after starting deliberations in a Houston federal courthouse. Jones, 26, said she was raped in 2005 while working for KBR at Camp Hope, Baghdad.

Jones sued KBR, its former parent Halliburton Co., and a former KBR firefighter, Charles Bortz, whom she identified as one of her rapists. The Houston-based companies and Bortz denied her allegations.

The alleged sexual assault was investigated by authorities but no criminal charges were filed.

"I was going up against a monster," Jones, sobbing loudly, told The Associated Press. "I'm devastated. I believe I did the right thing coming forward."

KBR applauded the jury's verdict, which in addition to rejecting Jones' claims that she was raped also denied her fraud claim against the company.

"Since 2005, KBR has been subjected to a continuing series of lies perpetuated by the plaintiff in front of Congress, in the media, and to any audience wishing to lend an ear to this story," spokeswoman Sharon Bolen said in a statement.

When the jury decided that Jones hadn't been raped, a number of the questions before them were rendered moot, including accusations against Halliburton, said KBR attorney Daniel Hedges.

Jones said the civil trial wasn't a fair fight. She said she felt she lost because the jury wasn't allowed to hear details of her attacker's past but were allowed to hear hers. Bortz said the sex was consensual.

Jones said she believed her bruises and the description of the rape would have swayed jurors.

"I just thought that the physical evidence would help. I guess the fact that my entire life was on display and (his) wasn't" made a difference, Jones said.

Her attorney had asked jurors to award her as much as 5 percent of KBR's net worth in actual or punitive damages. That would be more than $114 million, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Attorney Ron Estefan, in his closing arguments, accused KBR of neglecting to enforce its policies against sexual harassment for years by its contract workers in Iraq. The neglect facilitated Jones' rape, he said.

Lawyers for Bortz and the companies argued that Jones concocted her story out of fear of gossip among co-workers at the camp.

Jones' mother, Breanna Morgan, said she worried that the outcome might discourage future rape victims from coming forward, saying her daughter, "had to go through so much and she did it to help others."

"I feel like, because she did that and then there was this verdict, others won't want to," Morgan said. "I feel it sends a clear message." (GC Notes:  Yeah, they always send that message.  The different thing now that women have education and jobs thanks to feminism,  is that you will hear feminists talking like the patriarchs, defending the filthy, unequal treatment of women and children using the boy's standards and values.  "This is the greatest legal system in the Patriarchal world ",  say the boys and now so say the girls.  Gag.  Really?  Really?  Is this the best you can conceptualize about standards of review and evidence?)

Bolen, the KBR spokeswoman, said the "outcome of this jury trial as judged by her peers is the same result that the State Department got in 2005; that the Justice Department found in 2008. We are deeply gratified that the justice system has worked."

Jones, who had been a clerical worker in Baghdad's Green Zone, testified that she was drugged and then raped by a group of KBR firefighters. She said Bortz was in her room the next morning. During four days on the stand, she told jurors she has no memory of what happened because she believed she was drugged with Rohypnol, known as the "date rape drug," just before she was sexually assaulted.

The Associated Press usually doesn't identify people alleging sexual assault, but Jones' face and name have been in media reports and she has promoted her case on her own website.

Bortz's attorney tried to show that after the alleged rape, Jones did not appear to act like she had been attacked but instead went to work as normal, joked around and talked about camp gossip. Bortz no longer works for KBR.

Joanne Vorpahl, one of KBR's attorneys, tried to portray Jones to jurors as someone with a history of being dishonest on resumes and job applications, including not disclosing in a medical questionnaire she filled out before leaving for Iraq that she had been treated in prior years for various things, including depression, dizziness and kidney and bladder problems. Jones said those were simply mistakes and she never intended to be dishonest.

Jones also accused KBR officials of locking her in a trailer after she told them about the rape and not letting her call her family. She testified she's been treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, takes medications for anxiety and had to have reconstructive surgery for her breasts, which were disfigured in her attack.

KBR and Halliburton, which split in 2007, were unsuccessful in having Jones' case settled through arbitration as stipulated in her contract.

Due in part to Jones' case, federal lawmakers in 2009 approved a measure prohibiting contractors and subcontractors that receive $1 million in funds from the Department of Defense from requiring employees to resolve sexual assault allegations and other claims through arbitration.