After fighting for four years to have her case heard, Jamie Leigh Jones has lost her rape and sexual harassment lawsuit against military contractor KBR. After a day and a half of deliberations, a federal jury in Houston answered earlier this month “no” to the question of whether Jones was raped by former firefighter Charles Bortz while working in Iraq in 2005. It also found that KBR did not engage in fraud in inducing Jones to sign her employment contract to go overseas.
I interviewed Jones in 2008 – one of the few interviews that she gave the media at the time (Listen). Her story was disturbing.
Jones went to Iraq to serve her country and work her way up the corporate ladder at Haliburton/KBR. Instead, on the evening of July 28, 2005 at Camp Hope, Baghdad, Iraq, the 20-year-old was drugged and gang-raped by her co-workers, according to Jones.
When she went to report the incident and sought medical care, Jones was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and warned that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.
Jones convinced one of her guards to give her a cell phone. She called her father, who in turn contacted Congressman Ted Poe (R-TX). The State Department dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy and removed Jones from KBR custody.
Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration. The United States Department of Justice brought no criminal charges against the alleged assailants.
Finally last week, Jones had her day in court. As with all cases, the battle was as much about what evidence the jury got to see as the testimonies.
Mother Jones recapped how the evidence was presented and how KBR defended itself.
ROOFIES
Jones claimed that she was dosed with the date rape drug Rohypnol, which she believed was slipped into her drink by one of the KBR firefighters she was partying with in the Green Zone.
The Evidence: After reporting the alleged attack to a KBR co-worker, who drove Jones to the Army hospital at Camp Hope, she was examined by Dr. Jodi Schultz. Schultz took urine and blood samples, which tested negative for Rohypnol or any other date-rape drug. Jones’ legal team has challenged the lab work, arguing that it was never done properly, and also hired an expert to testify that just because the lab tests didn’t turn up the drugs doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
But KBR offered an alternate explanation for her memory loss: Jones was drunk. Jones acknowledged having up to five alcoholic beverages over three hours on the night in question. Noting that Jones weighed 120 pounds at the time, he concludes that booze could have caused her amnesia.
GANG RAPE
Jones claimed that she was the “subject of a brutal sexual attack by several attackers.”
The Evidence: There is no eyewitness testimony or other physical evidence in the case supporting the allegation that Jones was attacked by multiple people. A lab analysis of the rape kit shows DNA from a single man, firefighter Charles Boartz, the only person Jones has identified in her lawsuit as one of the assailants. (Boatz is no saint; since returning from Iraq, he has had run-ins with the law related to domestic violence.)
Todd Kelly, Jones’ lawyer, told Mother Jones that while he and Jones believe she was raped by multiple assailants, that issue will not be presented to the jury. “Although it is clear that she was raped by at least one person, we don’t have the evidence to prove she was gang raped,” he says.
SHIPPING CONTAINER
Jones has claimed that after reporting the alleged rape to her employers, KBR employees locked her in a shipping container, refused to let her call her family, and denied her food and water for at least 24 hours.
The Evidence: KBR claimed Jones was never imprisoned, and that she encountered no obstacles calling her family after seeking medical treatment.
A 2006 investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) backs up KBR’s story that the company placed Jones in a secure location before getting her home to Texas.
The judge threw out Jones’ charges that the supposed imprisonment constituted “retaliation” by KBR for reporting the rape, because Jones never mentioned this accusation in her original legal filings with the EEOC. (Federal law requires a plaintiff to exhaust administrative remedies with the EEOC before pursuing a sexual harassment claim in federal court.) The false-imprisonment allegation didn’t surface until two years after Jones’ original rape complaint, when Jones hired a new lawyer.
DISFIGURED BREASTS
Jones’ civil lawsuit alleged that during the gang rape she was so severely beaten that her breast implants ruptured and her pectoral muscles were torn, requiring extensive reconstructive surgery.
The Evidence: The Army’s Dr. Schultz testified in her deposition that Jones didn’t report any problems with her chest during the exam, and Schultz did not observe any implant leakage or rupture. Franklin Rose, a Houston plastic surgeon who reviewed the records from Jones’ original breast implant surgery for KBR, also found no evidence.
Witness lists submitted by the defendants indicate that Jones’ surgeon was expected to testify that in September 2005 he told Jones that she did not have torn pectoral muscles or ruptured implants. Kelly, Jones’ lawyer, takes responsibility for creating some confusion over anatomy. He says Jones suffered from a torn pectoral capsule, which held the implant, and that witnesses in the trial testified that she had such an injury and that it was caused by trauma.
“TORN UP DOWN THERE”
Jones claimed that on the morning after her attack, she woke up with no memory of the event but “found her body naked, severely bruised, with lacerations to her vagina and anus, blood running down her leg, her breast implants were ruptured, and her pectoral muscles torn.”
Evidence: According to expert reports in the court files, Dr. Schultz found some fissuring, redness, and irritation in the pertinent areas. She noted that while “Jamie had physical findings, I can’t tell you if they were consistent with rape.”
KBR has introduced evidence in court that shortly before deploying to Iraq, Jones underwent medical treatments that would have made her skin vulnerable to trauma for several months and could have led to “fissuring” during sex.
Read more the Mother Jones article.