Sen. John Cornyn, Protector Of Rapists

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas has no excuse.

Cornyn voted against an amendment to the FY2010 Defense Appropriations Bill that would stop funding to defense contractors who block employees bringing to court their cases of sexual assault that happened on the job.

Specifically, the amendment punishes companies that bind alleged victims in a legal business negotiation known as “mandatory arbitration.”

And by voting so, it’s hard to see just who he would try to protect other than rapists lurking in the defense industry.

Even odder is his inconsistency.

Last year, Cornyn, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced a resolution complaining about how the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5-4) that the death penalty for child rapists is unconstitutional (Kennedy v. Louisiana).

“Child rapists are the worst of the worst. Their crimes rob children of their innocence, injuring them in ways from which they can never fully recover. If a jury determines that a child rapist deserves the death penalty, then that penalty is appropriate, given the unspeakably depraved nature of this crime,” Sen. Cornyn said in a statement.

But in the case of Dallasite Jamie Leigh Jones, she deserved to have KBR (formerly of Halliburton) roadblock her path to justice over a gang-rape she claims occurred when, as a 19-year-old, she worked for the company in Iraq?

If Cornyn had applied the same logic, he should have supported the Franken’s amendment by calling for it to be strengthened — kill the company in the event it is found to have blocked such claims to courts, right?

Instead, he seems to have played a twisted game of revenge by voting against a law introduced by the very man he was hell bent on blocking from becoming a U.S. senator — Al Franken.

Cornyn should truly be ashamed by his action (or non-action) for having a senator other than a Texan come to the aid of one of his own constituency, a fellow Texan who would face the humiliation of negotiations run by a business itself.

As Pam Zeller, Executive Director of the Sexual Violence Center, explained:

“In arbitration the intent is to arrive at an agreement. This agreement does not have to be equitable in order to be resolved. It is also not intended to resolve a criminal matter. Sexual harassment and sexual violence inherently have an imbalance of power. Submitting a victim of sexual harassment, or sexual assault, to a process of arbitration is a revictimization of the victim, and minimizes the seriousness of the crime of sexual assault.

“The proposed amendment by Senator Franken will protect victims of sexual harassment and sexual violence from being revictimized through the arbitration process,” she added.

Even more embarrassing are the 29 other senators that also voting against the amendment; not surprisingly all them are Republican.

Sen. Franken and the 10 Republican senators who voted in favor, including Texas’ own Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison ought to be proud of their decision.

Said Jones, “This amendment makes all the hard times that I have gone through, when going public with such a personal tragedy, worth every tear shed from telling and retelling my horrific experience. I know this amendment will save so many in the future.”

— Nathan Diebenow