One in five acts of nonfatal violence against women happen in the workplace.

Sexual Violence: An Occupational Hazard — In Iraq and at Home
By Marie Tessier

Jamie Leigh Jones was just 20 in 2005 when she took a leap of faith to work in Iraq for her employer, military contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root, then a subsidiary of Halliburton. She went on a mission she believed in.

Shortly after her arrival in Iraq, however, Jones’ ambitions were dashed in an alleged gang rape by co-workers. Jones’ account of being drugged and raped, then betrayed by her employer and held captive in a shipping container, has shocked Congress and reportedly inspired the Justice Department to reconsider her criminal allegations. More victims are emerging, too. Jones’ story has also intensified an international debate over criminal accountability for what are essentially private soldiers employed by the United States government in Iraq and Afghanistan. KBR denies the allegations.

The Jones case is the perfect storm of competing public values. It is a dreadful reflection of a thriving American culture of violence against women. It is one odious long-term consequence of an ill-conceived war in Iraq in an era of troop cutbacks. It illustrates the fate of crime victims in the real world experience of criminal and employment law.

Still, Jones, now 23, is an emblem of a new generation of women who have come of age expecting justice for sexual assault, and willing to tell their families, the media and the world about their exploitation. They intend to hold law enforcement officials and employers accountable for every violation of trust that has followed the crime.

As employment lawyers know, Jamie Leigh Jones is, in the end, one extreme example among thousands of victims of violence whose jobs and careers suffer as a result. Experiences like hers at KBR are the reason that sexual assault is recognized as an occupational safety problem throughout the workforce by the Centers for Disease Control and the Pentagon, for example.

Nearly half of all sexual assault victims are fired or lose their jobs in the year following the assault, according to figures from the feminist law group Legal Momentum. Some states have passed laws to ensure that crime victims have a right to leave work for criminal proceedings or medical care. The far-reaching impact of sexual assault, however, often renders such legal protections meaningless, and few cover civil court proceedings such as seeking protection from abuse.

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