DAILY SHOW: As Jon Stewart reported on last night’s Daily Show, 30 GOP Senators (that’s 75% of all Republicans in the Senate for those keeping score at home) recently voted in favor of KBR and Halliburton’s right to gang-rape employees. It’s shocking, I know. However, it is important to keep in mind that KBR and Halliburton directed Chinatown. MORE

THE GUARDIAN: US defence firms are to be barred from lucrative government contracts if they refuse to allow employees access to the courts, after a woman working for a Halliburton subsidiary in Iraq was prevented from taking legal action over an alleged gang rape by fellow workers. Al Franken, the Senate’s newest member, has won an amendment to the defence appropriations bill prompted by the case of Jamie Leigh Jones. She alleges that she was drugged and raped by seven American contractors in Baghdad in 2005. Jones, who was employed by KBR, which was fighting oil fires, says that a pattern of subsequent behaviour by the firm, including allegedly locking her in a container under armed guard and losing forensic evidence, amounts to a cover-up. Halliburton/KBR used a clause in her contract requiring disputes to be settled by arbitration to block legal action – a policy which, her lawyer says, has encouraged assaults by creating a climate of impunity.Franken described it as a denial of justice. “Contractors are using fine print to deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court,” he said in a Senate debate. MORE

THE EXAMINER:  It would seem that if anything could get bi-partisan support it would be the Franken Anti-Government Contractor Rape Liability bill. This democratically sponsored bill, which did pass in the Senate 68 to 30, still had 30 senators who could not support it. And no, it is not because the language of the bill has something sneaky stuck in, it really does what it claims to do and nothing else. Sec. 8104. (a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any existing or new Federal contract if the contractor or a subcontractor at any tier requires that an employee or independent contractor, as a condition of employment, sign a contract that mandates that the employee or independent contractor performing work under the contract or subcontract resolve through arbitration any claim under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any tort related to or arising out of sexual assault or harassment, including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, or negligent hiring, supervision, or retention. MORE

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Rape-Nuts
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

[Click HERE to learn the story behind this picture]

VIENNA, Austria – Police have found a woman missing since 1984, who told authorities that her father had kept her in a cellar for almost 24 years and that she had given birth to at least six children after being repeatedly raped by him. The 73-year-old father (pictured, left) was taken into custody, said Franz Polzer, head of the Lower Austrian Bureau of Criminal Affairs, on Sunday. Authorities found the woman [NOT pictured, above] Saturday evening in the town of Amstetten following a tip, Lower Austria police said in a statement. The 42-year-old woman told police that her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 and locked her in a room in the cellar on Aug. 28, 1984. During the 24 years that followed, she said she was continually abused and gave birth to six children, the statement said. She said she gave birth to twins in 1996 but one died several days later; police said they were investigating. MORE

UPDATE: A 73-year-old Austrian man has confessed to imprisoning his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathering her seven children, police have said. The head of the criminal affairs bureau in the province of Lower Austria, Franz Polzer, told the BBC that “Josef F” had confessed during questioning on Monday.

PREVIOUSLY IN AUSTRIA: Natascha Kampusch (born February 17, 1988 in Vienna) is an Austrian woman who was abducted at the age of 10 on 2 March 1998, and remained in custody of her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, for more than eight years, until she escaped on 23 August 2006. During the eight years of her captivity, Kampusch was held in a small cellar underneath Priklopil’s garage. The entrance was concealed behind a cupboard, and had only 5 m² of space (approximately 54 ft²). The chamber, which had a door made of steel, had no windows and was soundproof.[11] For the first six months of her captivity, Kampusch was not allowed to leave the chamber at any time, and for several years after her kidnapping she was not allowed to leave the tiny space at night. MORE

PREVIOUSLY IN AUSTRIA: Three Austrian girls were imprisoned by their mother in a house in a suburb of Linz for seven years. They were kept in almost complete darkness, playing only with mice and communicating in their own language. They were rescued in 2005 when police broke into the house after a neighbour, who had reported his suspicions several times, threatened a local council official with a lawsuit. MORE

RELATED: In Colombia, a nation scarred by civil strife for close to 40 years, Ingrid Betancourt shook up the political scene and garnered national prominence with a bold campaign against drug cartels and political corruption. In the midst of her ambitious 2002 presidential candidacy, Betancourt was silenced after she was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — and spent election day deep in the jungle, just one more of nearly three thousand such victims each year. A film by Victoria Bruce and Karin Hayes, the CINEMAX Reel Life presentation THE KIDNAPPING OF INGRID BETANCOURT recounts the extraordinary story of one woman’s fight to purge her nation of corruption and her family’s desperate struggle to free her and keep her message alive. MORE

TIMELINE OF BASEMENT CAPTIVITY AND BREEDING AFTER THE JUMP

[via THE GUARDIAN]

1977

Josef Fritzl is believed to have begun abusing his daughter Elisabeth, who was then aged 11.

August 24 1984

Fritzl allegedly drugged and handcuffed Elisabeth, locking her in a cellar at the family home in Amsteten, north-west Austria.

September 1984

A letter in Elisabeth’s handwriting appears, telling her parents to stop looking for her. Police say they believe she could have become a member of a sect.

1988-1989

Kerstin, the first of Elisabeth’s seven children, is born in the cellar. The exact date of birth is unknown. Her second child, Stefan, is born around a year later.

May 1993

A nine-month-old baby is found outside the family home along with a note from Elisabeth asking for the child to be cared for.

December 1994

Another baby, Monika, is discovered outside the house along with another note asking for care. Elisabeth’s parents are given permission to become foster parents.

May 1996

Elisabeth gives birth to twins, but one dies after three days. Fritzl allegedly burnt the body.

1997

The surviving twin, Alexander, is moved upstairs.

2003

A new note from Elisabeth arrives, saying she had given birth to a son, Felix, a year earlier. He is bought up with Kerstin and Stefan in the cellar.

April 19 2008

Kerstin is admitted to hospital with a life-threatening illness. Police urge Elisabeth to contact them.

April 19-27 2008

Fritzl releases Elisabeth along with Stefan and Felix, the two remaining children in the cellar. He claims Elisabeth has chosen to return home.

April 26 2008

Elisabeth, now 42, and her 73-year-old father appear together at the hospital where Kirstin is being treated. He is arrested on suspicion of sexual abuse and abduction.

April 27 2008

Elisabeth and her children are taken into care. Kirstin remains in hospital in a critical condition.

FROM THE HUFFINGTON POST: Wayne Dumond raped Ashley Stevens, Clinton’s distant cousin, in 1984 when she was a 17-year-old high school student in Forest City, Arkansas. He was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison, plus 20 years. In 1992, Jim Guy Tucker, who became governor of Arkansas after Clinton left office, reduced Dumond’s sentence to 39.5 years.Shortly after taking office in 1996, Huckabee announced his intention to commute Dumond’s sentence to time served. A public outcry ensued. Twenty women members of the state House of Representatives protested the commutation proposal. The editorial pages of some Arkansas newspapers questioned Huckabee’s judgment and suggested he reconsider.

What the public never knew, however, was that other women who had been sexually assaulted by Dumond had privately written Huckabee about their anguish. Their very private attempts at changing Huckabee’s mind, they later told the Huffington Post, were based on concerns that speaking out publicly would have been too painful and traumatizing.

One such letter was from the daughter of a Dumond rape victim:

When you ran for office, one of the reasons I voted for you was the fact you are/were a Baptist preacher. I come from a very strong Baptist background… [O]ne of my grandfathers is also a preacher. I have always been a faithful church member where I am the choir director, yet this is one event that is not so easily forgiven.I have prayed about these feelings, but once someone hurts your mother, or daughter the way this man hurt my mother I believe that you would feel the same…

Please understand that this letter is coming from my heart…. I would love to have the chance to talk to you about this matter as a daughter of a surviving rape victim.

The woman provided Huckabee with her personal phone number in hopes that he or at least someone on his staff would call. She says that she never heard back.

What was left unsaid in her letter to Huckabee was that she was three years old when, in the 1970s, Dumond raped her mother. The girl was in her mother’s bed asleep when the rape occurred. Dumond held a butcher’s knife to her mother’s throat during the assault.

In an interview, her mother told the Huffington Post how she fought with Dumond to wrestle the knife away from him, willing to risk her own life rather than suffer at Dumond’s hands.

But Dumond overcame her resistance. He pointed to her daughter sleeping next to her and threatened: “If you don’t cooperate with me, she’ll be next.”

The woman did as she was told. As Dumond continued to violently rape her, the woman recalled, she lay consciously and deliberately silent. Even as she was being assaulted, she gently stroked her daughter’s hair, praying she would not wake up.

When the assault was over, the woman said, Dumond threatened to come back and rape and kill her daughter if she told anyone.

Twenty-three years after the rape, the girl who had been protected by her mother’s silence attempted to persuade Huckabee to keep Dumond behind bars. Fearing that the rapist would attack her mother again, she wrote to the governor. MORE

RELATED: Wayne DuMond has died. Wayne DuMond would normally not be someone especially famous — or in his case, infamous. But he was used as a pawn in a disgusting political game whose intent was to attack Bill Clinton, and the people playing the game didn’t give a rat’s behind who got hurt as a result. According to the Clinton-haters, DuMond was framed for raping 17-year-old Ashley Stephens, a distant Clinton cousin. So eventually they got Huckabee — a Republican, and one of Clinton’s biggest enemies locally — to let DuMond out early. What happened after that? Wayne DuMond killed a woman

PREVIOUSLY: Does Mike Huckabee Have A Willie Horton Problem?