Chris Lyes

Elizabeth was just 18 when she was raped by a colleague of hers at McDonalds, where she worked part-time during sixth form. She went to the police, but nothing happened. No charges, no consequences, no justice. Her rapist walked free and kept his job. Now, she is speaking out. Having bravely waived her right to anonymity, Elizabeth (@ElizabethHaighx) wrote: “No one tells you how much it hurts when a man forces himself into your frozen, shocked body. There is no manual that prepares you for the pain — the sheer, deadening terror — of losing your virginity to a rapist. I said all the ‘right’ things. I told him I didn’t want to. I begged him, repeatedly, to stop.  But the man — a longer-serving colleague from McDonald’s where I worked part-time — raped me anyway. And the chilling fact… is that the prevailing culture at McDonald’s not only failed to check this sort of outrageous behaviour, but turned a blind eye to it. In short, predatory men were permitted to run amok. There was no duty of care shown to female employees as young as 16, who had no recourse to help if they were harassed.  And male staff who flirted, made lewd sexual comments and touched young women inappropriately never faced reprimand from their seniors who were often as culpable of bad behaviour themselves. An unspoken rule decreed that pretty female employees should be deployed in customer-facing roles. ‘Tits on tills’ was the crude aphorism used. Nobody, in my experience, ever acknowledged it was a policy, but it happened routinely: attractive women worked front of house; men almost always in the kitchen. Little wonder then, that the McDonald’s colleague who raped me, would be unlikely to face penalties at work for his crime.  Actually he felt entitled to abuse me without any fear that his actions would have consequences.” And Elizabeth is not alone in her experience. Hundreds of present and former McDonalds staff have recently spoken out about the culture of silence, sexism, sexual harassment within the company. In a Northern Irish branch, sexual contact between managers and junior staffers (which is prohibited under McDonalds policy) was so rife there was an alleged outbreak of gonorrhoea. A teenage worker in Devon claimed a senior manager choked and groped her. Welsh McDonalds managers are alleged to have bet on who could sleep with new hires first. And the list goes on. For years, young women and girls working at the world’s largest fast-food chain have been left at the mercy of predatory managers and senior staff, while those in power turned a blind eye. Why? Because McDonalds cared more about profits than protecting their own employees from harassment and abuse. Enough is enough. Change must happen. Now.