Senator John Ensign votes against helping rape victims

Senator John Ensign votes against helping rape victims

By: David Phillips

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) introduced an amendment yesterday (senate amendment 2588 to H.R. 3326) to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010 that would prevent the federal government from funding contractors whose employee contracts prevent workers from pursuing allegations of rape against co-workers.

The amendment reads: "To prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims."

Basically this amendment would strip all government contractors from doing business with the federal government who prevent women form pursuing their rapists in a court of law because of wording in their employment contracts with the contractors.

In a Senate vote the Bill passed with some bipartisan support by a vote of 68-30. And all 30 nay votes were from republicans including Senator John Ensign (R-NV) .

This all was brought about by a women, Jamie Leigh Jones, who was working in Baghdad in 2005 for Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) a subsidiary of Halliburton when she was drugged and gang-raped by seven US contractors and held captive by two KBR guards in a shipping container. Ms. Jones is still waiting for her day in court.

Ms. Jones is not the only case, there are several cases of women being raped by fellow employee’s of defense contractors and like Ms. Jones they are not allowed to pursue court trials because of some words in their employee contract.

Seems like a slam dunk, right? How could anyone in the Senate stand idly by and allow defense contractors to get away with rape? You would think that the vote would be unanimous, you would think that our government using our tax dollars would know that we the people, would expect this practice to end, now, but Senator John Ensign and 29 other republican senators said no. They said no to stopping the practice of allowing rapists to get away free, they said no to women who have been brutalized, they said no to basic human dignity.

The republican party really likes the word, “no“.