A local family is suing McDonald's after their 14-year-old daughter was allegedly raped by her manager.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, names Rice Enterprises LLC, McDonald's USA and McDonald's Corporation as defendants. It claims 42-year-old Walter A. Garner is a registered sex offender, yet was allowed to work with minors. It also alleges upper management at Rice Enterprises knew Garner was harassing employees, but took little action.
Rice Enterprises operates eight McDonald's restaurants in Allegheny County, including Brentwood, Upper St. Clair, Northside, Mt. Oliver, Pleasant Hills, Scott Township, South Park and West Mifflin.
Garner was arrested in April for allegedly showing child pornography to another minor employee. During that investigation, police learned about the rape allegations. He is now facing multiple charges in both cases.
Alan Perer, the family's attorney, believes McDonald's was responsible for knowing Garner is a registered sex offender, and he shouldn't have been working with minors.
"The store, they're hiring somebody to supervise minors, you don't have the situation where you're going to spend that two minutes and make sure this person is okay to work with kids?"
The lawsuit claims multiple minor employees reported Garner to upper management for harassment. Management is also accused of seeing surveillance footage of Garner inappropriately touching an employee, but did not discipline him or fire him following the incident.
Garner is accused of acting increasingly inappropriate with the 14-year-old girl, eventually following her into the bathroom at work and raping her.
"Horrible stuff," Perer said. "[McDonald's] knew about it, and did nothing about it."
Michele Rice, McDonald's owner-operator with Rice Enterprises released a statement to News Radio KDKA.
"The allegations made in the lawsuit are deeply disturbing – my organization has no tolerance for sexual harassment, and we terminated the employee in question as soon as we learned about a complaint against him. While all of our employees undergo safe and respectful workplace training upon hire, we’ve recently expanded our training to be bi-annual, in addition to adding enhanced security measures at our restaurants. We have offered our full support to the impacted employee and are fully cooperating with the police investigation into these allegations."