Things That Piss Me Off, Part One December 11, 2007

I was going to post about holiday cheer and the like (specifically: how my fiance found, bought and dragged home the largest tree in Manhattan; if you have about 500 extra ornaments laying around feel free to send them my way) but then I read an article that made me want to vomit.

I don’t normally like to get political here. I get way too heated (I’m a politician’s daughter; I was born heated) and at the same time I don’t like to offend (I was also born a Libra) and in general I’m so disillusioned with the whole thing, both parties, both ends of the spectrum that I should probably just put on some heavy eyeliner, lace up some Doc Martens and listen to thrash metal in my dark bedroom (is that what the broody kids listen to these days? Thrash metal?)

But every once in a while something gets me riled up and today that something is the following: a gang rape cover-up by the US and Halliburton.

In sum: Jamie Leigh Jones was an administrative assistant working for a Halliburton subsidiary in Iraq. One night she was drugged and gang-raped - by her fellow employees - so violently that it ruptured a breast implant, tore her pectoral muscles and left her covered in blood, bruised and battered, both physically and, of course, emotionally. She immediately went to a State Department hospital, but the rape kit which proved that she had been raped both vaginally and anally mysteriously “disappeared” when it was handed over to security guards. Then Jones herself was handed over to security guards - locked in a shipping container for 24 hours without food, water, medical care or contact with the outside world. She was told to “get over it” or “return to the US with no guarantee of a job.”

Thankfully, a sympathetic guard eventually gave Jamie a cell phone, which she used to call her father.

There is no criminal investigation, nor will there ever be. Her attackers will never serve time behind bars, due to “a little lawless oasis called the Green Zone.” Essentially, according to legal experts, there is a huge loophole that leaves American contractors in Iraq out of the reach of American law.

Awesome.

I mean, essentially this girl’s (and she is a girl at 22 years old) only chance at justice comes in the form of a civil suit, something that is being contested by her former employer who claims that her employment contract requires arbitration (must less effective - the jackasses at Halliburton have won 80% of their suits that have gone to arbitration, which is essentially a third party decision - no judge or jury or formal transcripts; also - what the fuck? Wasn’t her employment contract, uh, breached when she was, oh, GANG RAPED? And LOCKED IN A SHIPPING CONTAINER? And it was COVERED UP FOR TWO YEARS?)

I mean. There are no words. There are no words for what happened and there are no words for how this makes me so angry I shake as I type this.

How does a company like this operate so far outside the law? This a company that we as Americans, however indirectly, pay for. The American people pay taxes to the government, the government pays Halliburton, Halliburton pays their employees and their employees can fucking gang-rape a girl and get away with it?

Boys will be boys, eh? Isn’t that the mentality?

And boys will certainly be boys when they know they can get away with anything - gang rape, killing innocent civilians - all without repercussions.

Excuse me while I go rock back and forth in a corner.

Sometimes I’m so naive, living in my little world with my little job and my little relationship and my little wedding and my little friends…and then reality smacks me upside the head and reminds me that there are evil people doing evil things and getting away with them.

I know this isn’t the type of post you’ve come to expect from Such Great Heights but I couldn’t possibly write any more about wedding planning or that huge ass Christmas tree when this was lingering in my thoughts all day.

Jamie Leigh Jones has set up a foundation for women in similar situations. I guess that’s - pathetically - the least we can hope for. That other women who go through this can get the proper emotional and physical care that they need.

The most we can hope for is that it never, ever happens again.  Except it will. And the US will continue to do the equivalent of a sympathetic shrug, a “nothing we can do about it folks, sorry.”