In late 2009, Senator Al Franken proposed an amendment to the appropriations bill that supported defense contractors such as Halliburton and Blackwater. This amendment was brought about by shocking statistics showing that upwards of 1/3 of all military servicewomen have been raped BY THEIR OWN COMRADES IN ARMS and over 70% have been sexually harassed. It’s an ongoing hell for our soldiers and contractors abroad who have essentially been told to “get over it”, “shut up or lose your job”, or that their silence would be best for morale.

In a country that values justice and “our day in court”, the amendment was aimed at ensuring that those who suffered rape/sexual assault/sexual harassment would not have to ask for justice from the very ones who victimized them. — It was a anti-rape amendment that should have gone unnoticed… except for one thing… 30 Republican Senators voted for Rape.


To be fair, things are never as simple as the headlines proclaim. To understand the Franken amendment and the furor it has caused, we have to start with the story of Jamie Leigh Jones, an employee of Haliburton who claimed that she was drugged, brutally assaulted and gang-raped by coworkers on July 25th, 2005 at Camp Hope in Baghdad. The rape was confirmed both by a confession of one of her assailants AND US Army physician Jodi Schultz who performed a Rape Kit on Jone. Schultz reported the rape to her KBR/Halliburton superiors and subsequently confined to a shipping container without food, water or medical reatment. One of her armed guards, sympathetic to her suffering, gave her a cell phone which eventually ended her captivity after the State Department dispatched agents from the US Embassy to remove Jones from KBR custody.

The Rape Kit mysteriously disappeared into Halliburton’s care, only emerging more than two years later, and then only after being compelled from Halliburton by a US State Department Diplomat. Even when returned, Halliburton had somehow lost crucial photos of Jone’s mangled body and Shultz’s notes detailing the rape trauma. Jones tried to sue, but KBR/Halliburton claimed that they were protected by a clause in Jone’s contract that demanded for arbitration instead of court.

Enough was enough… Senator Franken recognized that the US depends of contractors like KBR/Halliburton so he wasn’t foolish enough to think that he could fire them or even discipline them from the Senate. Instead, he wrote an amendment to the appropriations bill that pays the contractors. The amendment removed the “right” of contractors to demand arbitration even in criminal cases.

It seemed fair enough to most… if a corporation has a long history of ignoring incidents of sexual assault, you don’t place them in charge of determining whether or not a sexual assault actually occurred. — Unfortunately, the 30 Republican Senators opposed the bill because it would create a logjam of cases that could never be cleared, be a boon to lawyers who specialize in sexual assault litigation, and otherwise make it impossible for our defense contractors to do their work.

The conservative blogosphere took up the Republican cause even more vehemently, proclaiming that this was proof that Franken and his liberal cohorts were in the pockets of special interests and that they didn’t care about the safety of the men and women who worked for the US abroad. They wrote that this was part of the Obama agenda to place everything under government control, to do away with arbitration and make EVERY case a federal case.

All of that makes perfect sense… except for one thing… none of it is true.

Here’s the actual, UNCHANGED text of the Franken Amendment to the appropriations bill:

Sec. 8104. (a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any existing or new Federal contract if the contractor or a subcontractor at any tier requires that an employee or independent contractor, as a condition of employment, sign a contract that mandates that the employee or independent contractor performing work under the contract or subcontract resolve through arbitration any claim under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any tort related to or arising out of sexual assault or harassment, including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, or negligent hiring, supervision, or retention.

(b) The prohibition in subsection (a) does not apply with respect to employment contracts that may not be enforced in a court of the United States.

I know that it sounds like a lot of legalese, but please follow along for a moment…

The amendment doesn’t do away with arbitration, nor does it place the jurisdiction for abuse cases in the hands of the Federal Government. Rather, the Franken Amendment essentially states that in cases where a crime has taken place the victim ALWAYS has the right to seek justice in the US court system. In other words, an employer CANNOT ask an employee to sign away his or her basic civil liberties.

Now I don’t believe that these Republican senators are bad men. Nor do I REALLY believe that they are pro-rape, but what good can possibly come from denying victims of some of the most horrific crimes committed by humankind their just day in court?

Last 10 posts by Robert Ballecer