No more excuses

Saturday, Feb. 16, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.

An increasing number of American women employed by private contractors in Iraq are stepping forward to report that they were sexually assaulted by co-workers there, but the women have found they have little legal recourse to seek justice.

In testimony before Congress this week, Jamie Leigh Jones, a former employee of the military contractor KBR, said she and at least 38 other women have been raped, assaulted or harassed by co-workers in Iraq, Kuwait and other countries. But they could not sue their employer or otherwise seek justice in open court because of an arbitration clause contained in their KBR work contracts.

Jones’ testimony Tuesday was a follow-up to a December hearing in which she told Congress she had been gang-raped by her KBR co-workers in 2005.

One Ohio woman, who was sent to Iraq to drive Army supply trucks, told The New York Times she was sexually assaulted by two KBR drivers on separate occasions — the second attack occurring after she had reported the first to KBR officials.

She was fired after complaining to the company that female employees were harassed and threatened. She won a settlement in arbitration, but, as she told the Times, that isn’t the same as receiving justice. “When I complained to KBR, they didn’t do anything,” she said, adding that the assaulters “changed my life forever, and they got away with it.”

The problem, federal officials say, is that the military justice system doesn’t apply to private contractors, and U.S. officials remain unclear about whether other U.S. laws apply to those working for the government in foreign lands.

The Bush administration has outsourced the logistics and support of this war to an inordinate number of private companies without determining in any way how the U.S. government would regulate these workers’ behaviors — which, as illustrated by these reports of sexual assaults, can be reprehensible.

These women in Iraq are doing some of the military’s work — in many cases facing the same mortal risks as members of the U.S. military — and their government has done nothing to ensure that they are protected from being abused by their own co-workers and countrymen.

This appalling behavior should not be tolerated and those responsible for these despicable acts must be brought to justice.