Dogs of War: No justice on contractor rape

[maddezmom]

Dogs of War: No justice on contractor rape


Published: April 18, 2008 at 1:59 PM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:By DAVID ISENBERG
WASHINGTON, April 18 (UPI) -- Since the very first conflicts, until it was made illegal under international law, rape was a part of warfare. But a series of recent allegations against Private Military Contractors suggests that it is not just a historical phenomenon.

Earlier this month the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on the issue. The title, "Closing legal Loopholes: Prosecuting Sexual Assaults and Other Violent Crimes Committed Overseas by American Civilians in a Combat Environment," said it all.

Consider Dawn Leamon's story, which is chronicled in detail in the April 3 issue of The Nation. She says that while working for the U.S. contractor Kellogg Brown Root she was raped in Iraq earlier this year by a U.S. soldier and a KBR colleague.

~snip~

So bad is the record of the Justice Department, it even makes the Pentagon look good. Defense officials at the Senate hearing noted that it has engaged in a concerted effort to combat sexual assaults within stateside and overseas military communities. Beginning in early 2005 more than a dozen policy memorandums were issued that addressed sexual assault issues and care for victims of sexual assault, and the department even established a special policy office on Sexual Assault Prevention and Response.

more:http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Analysis/2008/04/18/dogs_of_war_no_justice_on_contractor_rape/7634/


KBR's Rape Problem
Karen Houppert

As news broke of the rape of yet another US military contractor employee in Iraq , the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened a hearing April 9 to demand that the Justice Department explain why it has failed to prosecute a single sexual assault case in the theater since the Iraq War began.

"American women working in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to be sexually assaulted while their assailants go free," said Senator Bill Nelson, who called the hearing. Because squabbles about who has jurisdiction in these cases have proliferated, Nelson arranged to have representatives from the Defense, State and Justice departments sit down together in front of him. They were forced to listen while the latest victims testified.

Dawn Leamon, who worked for a subsidiary of KBR and had told her story to The Nation a week before, described--with her back to the packed room and her voice (mostly) steady--being sodomized and forced to have oral sex with a KBR colleague and a Special Forces soldier two months earlier. When she reported the incident to KBR supervisors, she met a series of obstacles, she said. "They would tell me to stay quiet about it or try to make it seem as if I brought it on myself or lied about it."


more:http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080505/houppert

[niyad]

1. this, of course, is in addition to the multiple rapes committed on iraqi women by our

military

[sophiej1]

2. where is the outrage?

my congressman hasn't even responded to my request that he support an investigation. Has yours?
apparently it's not just our military that depends on criminals and thugs.