A franchisee of quick meals big McDonald’s has agreed to pay a teenage lady $4.4 million to settle her lawsuit over having been sexually assaulted by a Pittsburgh-area restaurant supervisor who was a registered intercourse offender, the sufferer’s attorneys introduced on Monday.
The deal between the lady, who was 14 on the time of the 2021 sexual assault, and McDonald’s franchisee Rice Enterprises LLC, compensates her for the assault by Walter A. Garner within the restaurant rest room.
On the time, Garner, now 44, had served jail time and was listed on the Megan’s Legislation web site for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old lady.
Garner pleaded responsible in 2021 to statutory sexual assault, indecent assault and different prices for the McDonald’s assault and is serving a state jail sentence. A message in search of remark was left Monday for the general public defenders who represented him in that case and within the 2003 case that was resolved with a responsible plea to aggravated indecent assault and different prices.
The lawsuit helped immediate an October 2021 strike by workers in 12 U.S. cities, an effort to get the corporate to higher handle what they described as an ongoing drawback of sexual harassment and violence in McDonald’s shops.
Via a McDonald’s spokesperson, Rice Enterprises mentioned it fired Garner as quickly as they discovered of the allegations towards him in 2021.
“Since then, we’ve redoubled our efforts to ensure a positive and respectful experience for all employees in our restaurants, and our organization maintains a zero-tolerance policy for harassment of any kind,” Rice Enterprises mentioned within the emailed assertion. The corporate mentioned it places new hires by “safe and respectful workplace training” and has enhanced safety.
The worker was 14 when she started working at a McDonald’s in Bethel Park in October 2020. She mentioned she had no coaching on sexual harassment or methods to report it. Garner made sexual feedback to her and touched her inappropriately earlier than the lavatory sexual assault in mid-February 2021, in keeping with the lawsuit.
Garner was arrested in April 2021 after one other McDonald’s worker advised directors at her college about his habits and police had been known as, the lawsuit mentioned.
Lawyer Alan Perer, who represents the lady and her mother and father within the Allegheny County civil litigation, mentioned he questions how a intercourse offender was employed to handle women of highschool age.
“For a company to allow a known sex offender to have access to and control over young teens turns America’s best first job into a nightmare for those teens,” Perer mentioned in a launch.
McDonald’s USA known as the lady’s assault deeply troubling, issuing a press release that mentioned violence and sexual harassment are utterly unacceptable. The corporate mentioned it’s dedicated to offering franchisees with coaching sources to assist forestall harassment.
