Iraqis allege sex abuse at the British Embassy

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article3890121.ece


An Iraqi cleaner and two cooks claim that a culture of sexual harassment, abuse and bullying exists at the British Embassy in Baghdad.

The middle-aged cleaner told The Times that a British contractor with KBR, the company hired to maintain the embassy’s premises, offered to double her daily pay if she would stay the night with him. When she refused, she said, her pay was cut and she was later dismissed.

The Iraqis accuse the embassy of leaving the abuse unchallenged and failing adequately to respond to complaints against several British managers for KBR. The company was allowed to conduct its own inquiry, an arrangement criticised as a very serious conflict of interest.

The complainants – the cleaner and two male cooks who worked in the embassy canteen – say that some KBR managers groped Iraqi staff regularly, paid or otherwise rewarded them for sex and dismissed those who refused or spoke out.

-snip-

The Times tracked down the cleaner to her tiny flat. She reiterated the allegations she says she made to embassy officials last June. “I suffered this aggression under the British flag,” she said. “I felt like I had been destroyed.”

The Iraqis claimed that KBR managers bribed other workers to ensure that investigators heard a one-sided version of events. “Why didn’t they call us to tes-tify?” Nasser asked. “I would have asked to be given a lie-detector test to see whether I am telling the truth.”

After the cleaner’s dismissal, but before KBR investigators arrived in Baghdad, Mr Lodge wrote a letter of recommendation on her behalf. Mr Lodge wrote that she was “recognised as hard-working and industrious – the local KBR manager described her to me as a ‘good worker’.”
-----------------------


well, hey! that's the neo con way: bully, bribe, blackmail, threaten, murder, rape and raid.