KBR Employee Jamie Leigh Jones Alleges Gang Rape in Iraq, Exposes Systematic Use of Mandatory Arbitration to Shield Contractor Accountability

On July 28, 2005, KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones, then 22 years old and working her fourth day on the job in Baghdad, alleged she was drugged and gang-raped by KBR coworkers at Camp Hope in the Green Zone. Army doctors examined Jones and found evidence of sexual assault “both vaginally and anally,” but the rape kit subsequently disappeared after being handed over to KBR security officers, eliminating critical medical evidence. KBR’s response to Jones’ allegations revealed systematic contractor accountability evasion: the company confined her to a shipping container for at least 24 hours with armed guards who refused to let her leave, effectively holding her in captivity while threatening her employment. Jones borrowed a cell phone from a sympathetic guard and contacted her father in Texas, who reached Representative Ted Poe (R-TX). Poe’s office alerted the State Department, which dispatched U.S. Embassy agents to Baghdad to rescue Jones from KBR custody.

KBR’s most effective accountability shield was not the physical detention or evidence destruction, but rather the mandatory arbitration clause buried in Jones’ employment contract. This provision required Jones to resolve any legal claims against the company through private, secret arbitration rather than public courts—eliminating her constitutional right to a jury trial, preventing public scrutiny of contractor misconduct, and ensuring that any findings would remain confidential. When Jones filed a federal lawsuit in December 2007 against Halliburton and KBR alleging gang rape, assault, battery, false imprisonment, and fraudulent inducement, KBR immediately moved to compel arbitration, arguing that Jones had signed away her right to sue when she accepted employment. The mandatory arbitration provision represented systematic corporate design to eliminate legal accountability: claims would be heard by industry-friendly private arbitrators rather than juries, proceedings would remain secret rather than public, and results would create no legal precedent that could benefit future victims.

The 2006 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigation found Jones’ testimony credible, stating “The investigation credits Charging Party’s testimony, that she was indeed sexually assaulted by one or more Respondent employees and physical trauma was apparent.” However, a federal grand jury investigation produced no criminal indictments, demonstrating the systematic failure of legal accountability for contractor misconduct in Iraq war zones. The battle over mandatory arbitration continued for years: in September 2009, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Jones’ case could proceed in federal court rather than arbitration, finding that the arbitration clause was unconscionable under the specific circumstances. This legal victory came after four years of fighting simply for the right to have her claims heard publicly.

Jones’ case exposed how defense contractors systematically used mandatory arbitration clauses to shield themselves from accountability for sexual assault, harassment, and other serious misconduct. Her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October 2009 revealed that KBR had inserted these clauses in contracts for thousands of employees working in Iraq and Afghanistan, creating a legal framework where assault victims had no recourse to public courts and no ability to expose patterns of contractor misconduct through litigation. The mandatory arbitration system served contractor interests perfectly: victims faced secret proceedings with limited discovery, industry-friendly arbitrators, confidential outcomes, and no legal precedent that could help future victims identify systematic problems or hold companies accountable.

The broader implications extended beyond KBR to the entire defense contractor industry, which had adopted mandatory arbitration as standard practice to eliminate legal accountability while profiting from billions in government contracts. Jones’ case demonstrated how privatization of military functions combined with corporate legal innovations to create zones of systematic impunity: contractors exercised government authority in war zones while maintaining corporate legal protections, employees faced assault and abuse while contractual provisions eliminated their constitutional rights, and the government outsourced critical functions to companies that had structurally designed their operations to evade the accountability mechanisms that would apply to government employees or uniformed military personnel. The mandatory arbitration clause represented the legal architecture of corporate impunity, transforming constitutional rights and public accountability into negotiable contract terms that companies could eliminate as a condition of employment.