OGDEN -- A former Ogden woman who says she was raped and sexually harassed while working for a defense contractor in Iraq, then left in the middle of the Iraqi desert when she complained, has been awarded nearly $3 million through binding arbitration.
The arbitration award, approved last week, came after several years during which Tracy Barker unsuccessfully tried to sue her employer, KBR Inc., a former subsidiary of Halliburton Inc.
The courts told her she had to follow her employment contract, which required arbitration. Now, she said Tuesday, having won nearly $2.93 million in that binding arbitration, KBR is trying to get the award modified.
"Either you arbitrate or you don't, and they don't keep their word about anything," she said in a telephone interview from her home in Yuma, Ariz.
"It's been a long road, but I'm not surprised, though. KBR just doesn't keep their word. If I had got no money, I wouldn't have been able to amend and get money."
Barker, 38, is a 1989 graduate of Ogden High School who lived in Ogden from the time she was in eighth grade until she moved to North Carolina seven years ago, when her husband was transferred to Fort Bragg.
Her father, Dennis Howland, a Vietnam veteran, is senior vice commander and public affairs chairman for the Department of Utah Veterans of Foreign Wars.
In 2004, Barker took a job with Halliburton/KBR as a procurement officer. In 2005, while serving in Iraq supporting American troops, she said she was sexually attacked by a U.S. State Department translator in a military camp near the city of Basra.
Barker said she was drugged and raped by the employee, Ali Mokhtare. When she tried to report the crime, she was confined to quarters and, at one point, left by herself for 19 hours in the middle of the Iraqi desert, forced to get back to camp by herself.
Other sexual harassment included being shown pictures of animals copulating and being told one of the mottoes of Camp Basra was "We do anything to get you in bed."
She said she finally had to borrow a cell phone from a soldier so she could call her husband, a member of the Army's premier parachute team, The Golden Knights, and get help.
The translator admitted that he had pulled off her clothes but denied he raped her, and the State Department declined to prosecute.
Barker sued KBR, claiming that the company failed in its duty to protect her despite knowing how its female employees were treated in Iraq. Federal courts ruled that because she had signed a binding arbitration agreement in her employment contract, she had to go that route.
Barker said Tuesday she probably got a bigger settlement in arbitration, which she said proves the truth of her claims. She said she is angry that KBR is now trying to get the settlement modified.
KBR, in a statement to the Associated Press, said it disagrees with the ruling and is asking the courts to modify it.
"However, the decision validates what KBR has maintained all along, that the arbitration process is truly neutral and works in the best interests of the parties involved," the company said.
Barker said the company wants to pay only $300,000, not the awarded $2.93 million. She said she will continue to fight.
"It's taken a long time, like I said. It's a long road, but justice takes as long as it takes."
She said she hopes her case will give hope to other people who have been in the same situation and are suing.
"I don't want people to give up because sometimes it takes so long."
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