A Houston woman who says she was gang-raped by co-workers at a Halliburton/KBR camp in Baghdad won a major court battle last week when a Texas judge ordered that she can bring her case to court instead of forcing her into secretive arbitration proceedings with Halliburton and KBR. "We are ecstatic that [District Judge Keith Ellison] had the courage to uphold justice in this case," Jamie Leigh Jones' attorney Todd Kelly said after the decision.
KBR said late Monday that they may appeal the judge's decision. "KBR will review the judge's opinion and will continue to vigorously defend itself which may include an appeal," the company said in a statement to ABCNews.com.
Jones says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
Jones told ABCNews.com that she hopes other sexual abuse claims will also now be able to go before a jury rather than into arbitration. "I am hopeful that the judge's decision will open the door for other victims to seek justice against military contractors who fail to protect their employees from sexual abuse," Jones told ABCNews.com.