47 More Sexual Assault Victims of Halliburton and KBR

"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."
Theodore Roosevelt
26th President of the United States
1858 - 1919

“There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.”
James Thurber
American Writer
1894-1961

Update:

Forty seven more women have reported similar experiences to those of Jamie Leigh Jones. I had previously indicated the number was eleven, from an earlier research source. I have contacted the Jamie Leigh Jones Foundation directly for further information, so I hope to provide continuing updates. At least two of the women already have had similar court cases challenging the enforcement of arbitration clauses which was the subject of the Franken Amendment. They are mentioned in the May 9, 2008 decision of the Jamie Leigh Jones case in the United States District Court, Southern District of Texas, Houston Division. That decision mentions the similarity of the sexual assault in Cravetz v. Halliburton (Southern District of Florida Court), and the sexual assault in the case of Barker v. Halliburton (Southern District of Texas).

While looking into what I could find on the allegations of sexual assault related to Halliburton and KBR, I also came across a reference to a criminal conviction of David Charles Breda Jr. for the sexual assault of a woman while employed by a KBR subsidiary in Iraq. There is a wonderful web site hosted by the Project on Government Oversight, "POGO", which maintains a Federal Contractor Misconduct Database that is fascinating reading at http://www.pogo.org/.

The political fall out for those Senators who voted against the "Franken Amendment" has begun, with the first Senator, Vitters from Louisiana (R), to be confronted by a rape victim in his home state, following a public meeting on health care reform in Baton Rouge on Halloween.

Here is the link to the YouTube video of the encounter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6YZ1wP1978

It could be said that the real life confrontation was potentially far scarier for Vitters, at least politically, than any holiday monsters. It should be interesting to see if this vote against the Franken Amendment is more damaging to Vitters' re-election hopes in 2010 than the fall out from his prostitution scandal.

Vitters earned a certain notoriety for his use of a prostitutes, including apparently being phoned by the prostitution ring to set up appointments for their services while he was on the Senate Floor during actual votes, according to correlations between phone records and Senate vote records. Apparently the Senator has an interesting way of mixing business with pleasure, or at least the business of pleasure.

It has been the recent pattern when asked to explain their vote against the Franken Amendment, for the nay-voting Senators to state their opposition to the intent of the Amendment, while misstating the position of the Obama White House which supported the intent, and worked with the Senators sponsoring the Amendment to make it more enforceable and broader.

There is every possibility that there are more victims than the 11 who have now come forward in addition to Jamie Leigh Jones. It will be interesting to see how this plays out between now and the 2010 elections for those Senators, and with the Department of Justice.