Mother of Two Soldiers Latest to Allege Rape, Cover-up by KBR

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 5:18 AM on April 10, 2008.

Via ABC News, the third allegation of rape (and cover-up) against KBR to emerge in recent months:

Yet another woman has come forward saying she was brutally raped in Iraq while working for the U.S. contractor Kellogg Brown Root (KBR).

Dawn Leamon, who has two sons on active duty, says she was raped earlier this year by a U.S. soldier and a KBR colleague.

She will tell her horrific story to members of Congress today at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Leamon says that following her rape, she spoke with a woman at the KBR Employee Assistance Program. "She discouraged me from reporting, saying, 'You know what will happen if you do,'" Leamon said.

Leamon says KBR then assigned full-time security guards to her which gave her no privacy to talk about the incident, and her movements around camp were restricted, yet her attackers' movements were unrestricted.

"KBR did little or nothing to restore my sense of safety after I reported being raped," said Leamon.

At the recent Winter Soldier Hearings, I learned that in many cases the military doesn't cover the cost of rape test-kits -- victims often have to pay for them out of pocket. That's not directly related to this story about KBR, a private contractor, but I think it's an eye-opening indication of the larger military culture in which the firm operates.

Tagged as: rape, kbr, cover-up

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.