A Texas jury has rejected the allegations of Jennifer Leigh Jones, 26, who said that she was drugged and raped while working for the military contractor KBR Inc. (Kellogg, Brown & Root) in Iraq in 2005, The New York Times reported Friday. Jones “sued KBR, its former parent Halliburton Co. and a former KBR firefighter, Charles Bortz, whom she identified as one of her rapists. The accusation was investigated but no criminal charges were filed.” The federal jury “concluded that the sex was consensual.”
Daniel Gilbert of the Wall Street Journal wrote that Jones alleged that KBR “had defrauded her by concealing the risk of sexual assault at its camp in Iraq, and by including a mandatory arbitration clause in her contract for resolving work-related complaints.” Gilbert writes “Her testimony before Congress helped spur a change in federal law in 2009 that denies government contracts to companies that require arbitration to resolve a range of complaints, including sexual assault and harassment.”
KBR made a statement that it had been “subjected to a continuing series of lies perpetuated by the plaintiff,” and that “The outcome of this jury trial as judgment by her peers is the same result that the State Department got in 2005; that the Justice Department found in 2008.”
The Associated Press reported that “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.”
Daniel Gilbert of the Wall Street Journal wrote that Jones alleged that KBR “had defrauded her by concealing the risk of sexual assault at its camp in Iraq, and by including a mandatory arbitration clause in her contract for resolving work-related complaints.” Gilbert writes “Her testimony before Congress helped spur a change in federal law in 2009 that denies government contracts to companies that require arbitration to resolve a range of complaints, including sexual assault and harassment.”
KBR made a statement that it had been “subjected to a continuing series of lies perpetuated by the plaintiff,” and that “The outcome of this jury trial as judgment by her peers is the same result that the State Department got in 2005; that the Justice Department found in 2008.”
The Associated Press reported that “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.”
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