Houston Woman Raped by Halliburton Employees

Severe Warning: What I am about to post is not going to be a pretty picture. If you are faint of heart or get squeamish easy, DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT read.

I found this on one of Glenn Beck's transcripts. It is regarding a woman that worked for a Halliburton partner, KBR. About two years ago she was working in Iraq and was allegedly raped. I hate to jump to conclusions, strike that, I do jump to conclusions. Here is some of what is in the Glenn Beck transcript.

• GLENN: All right. Now, just to show you how fair and biased I am because I am biased, I'm a conservative but I try to be fair. And to be fair we've got to talk about another story that's coming out of Houston, Texas. Let me get my friend Pat Gray on, does mornings at KSEV. Pat, this is an outrageous story with Halliburton.
• GRAY: Yeah. Oh, it's incredible, incredible. First of all, I'm a little surprised that you are besmirching bloggers. Are you aware of what you need to do to become a blogger?

I am not quite sure what Glenn is saying regarding the bloggers, the transcript doesn't say.

• GRAY: The KBR situation is unbelievable. There's a young woman from Houston who went with -- this was when Halliburton and KBR were part of the same company. They've divested themselves of each other since. But she went as a contractor to Iraq and the first or second day, I mean, it was right after she got into the green zone, she was brutally raped. First of all, she was drugged.

• GLENN: Yes, she was vaginally and anally raped and apparently by several men for an extended period of time.

• GRAY: Yeah. So she actually, she went to the doctor and got a rape kit done and right after coming out of that, they apprehended her and put her in a shipping container with a bed and had 24-hour watch on her and would not let her leave, would not let her make a phone call back to the States. So finally one of the guys that was guarding her, one of the employees loaned her his cell phone and she called her dad back home in Houston and, you know, she said, Dad, I've been raped; I don't know what to do; I'm in a container, they are holding me here, I'm not able to leave, I'm a prisoner. He immediately, of course, went nuts as any dad would and contacted his congressman who happens to be Ted Poe.

If true, that is absolutely disgusting!

• GLENN: Great guy, one of the -- yeah, I've got to tell you Ted Poe is one of the best guys in congress. You want justice, you can go to Ted Poe. You want to know a straight -- you want to know the straight story, you go to Ted Poe. I like Ted.

I would like to learn more about this Ted Poe guy. I don't give a rat's rooty-tooty if he is Republican or Democrat. He seems like someone who is doing his job.
The transcript goes on to tell that the woman sold her story to screenplay. This is after nothing has happened in the investigation in two years.
Glenn wants to get Mr. Poe on the show tomorrow. Both gentleman talk about whether the perpetrators were American or Iraqi.

• GRAY: We don't even know that. We don't know that part of the story, whether they were Iraqis or Americans. My suspicion is they were Americans, which is why this is being kind of covered up so strongly.
• GLENN: I've got to tell you if they were -- well, I don't care who they were, but if they're Americans, they should be in jail for the rest of their lives.
• GRAY: Absolutely.
• GLENN: And anyone involved in the coverup, and I mean the President as well, in jail for the rest of their lives.

Click here to read the rest of the full of the transcript.
I wanted to see if I could find more on the story. Here is what I found from ABC News.

• By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD
• Dec. 10, 2007
• 
  
• A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
• Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
• "Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.
• In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
• "It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."
• Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
• "I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas...

• Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

I do not know too much about the law and court system, but the second page of this three page article goes on to talk about no one in the Justice Department doing anything and Congressman Poes statements.

• A spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told ABCNews.com he could not comment on the matter.
• Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case...

• Asked what reasons the departments gave for the apparent slowness of the probes, Poe sounded frustrated.
• "There are several, I think, their excuses, why the perpetrators haven't been prosecuted," Poe told ABC News. "But 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."
• Since no criminal charges have been filed, the only other option, according to Hutson, is the civil system, which is the approach that Jones is trying now. But Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom...

• In his interview with ABC News, Rep. Poe said he sided with Jones.
• "Air things out in a public forum of a courtroom," said Rep. Poe. "That's why we have courts in the United States."

• In her lawsuit, Jones' lawyer, Todd Kelly, says KBR and Halliburton created a "boys will be boys" atmosphere at the company barracks which put her and other female employees at great risk.

Until, up to now, I have just added parts of the article. I just gotta comment on this. "Boys will be boys"? Excuse me, this is more than just unwanted flirting or even unwanted kissing/inappropriate touching. Not that I am excusing these things. What I am saying is that the whole thing is just beyond disgusting and beyond words! What was done to her is not, repeat, NOT normal behavior. for the full article in ABC News click here.