In 2005 Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. Instead of getting help from the company, she was locked in a shipping container for 24 hours without food water or a bed and warned that if she left Iraq for medical treatment she would lose her job (and her case was not an isolated case).

Jones was released only after someone helped her get word to her father in Houston who got a congressman to intercede. Jones was prevented from bringing charges against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration.

What kind of justice is that? And why didn’t the U.S. attorney general bring rape charges against the rapists?

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., sponsored an amendment to the 2010 defense appropriations bill that would withhold defense contracts from companies like KBR if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual-assault cases to court. Sen. Jeff  Sessions, R-Ala., called the amendment a political attack on Halliburton Co. They protect Dick Cheney’s deferred payments on war contracts.

Thirty Republican senators, all men, including Wyoming’s Sens. John Barrasso and Mike Enzi, voted against Franken’s amendment, but it passed 68 to 30. The people of Wyoming should know about this and ask our two senators why they opposed legislation to crack down on gang rape.

Al Hamburg

Torrington, Wyo.