‘Gonna Tear Your Ass Up’: Teen Employees Claim Sexual Harassment at Arby’s
The girls say they were subjected to “severe, pervasive, unwanted, degrading, and offensive sexual conduct,” according to a federal lawsuit filed over the weekend.
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“I’m gonna tear your ass up.” “If you let me suck your breasts, I won’t go any lower.” “You just don’t know what I could do to you.”
Several teen girls working at an Arby’s in Atmore, Alabama, regularly heard such comments from a team leader trainee over several months at the fast-food chain, according to a federal lawsuit filed Friday.
The girls claim they were were subjected to “severe, pervasive, unwanted, degrading, and offensive sexual conduct,” the complaint says.
The fast-food chain hired the trainee in May 2016, and he allegedly tormented the girls through August of that same year by groping them, following them home, pressuring them to date him, and repeatedly harassing them with crude remarks.
The franchisee, Beavers Inc., was named as a defendant in the suit, which was filed by the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.
The team leader allegedly asked for hugs or kisses from the employees, showed one of them a picture of his genitalia, and otherwise made “persistent attempts” to pursue sexual relationships with the teens, sending “Facebook and text messages begging [them] to come home with him or let him come home with them,” according to the lawsuit.
Other times, he “deliberately invaded the personal space of female employees,” at one point waiting for a teen to go into the cooler alone, where he “approached her from behind, and rubbed his groin against her buttocks,” the complaint claims.
Employees and others reported the allegedly “open and notorious” harassment to supervisors and managers, but nothing happened until the alleged perpetrator physically injured one of the teens, according to the suit.
“Federal anti-discrimination laws exist to protect workers from this kind of abuse,” Delner Franklin-Thomas, district director of the commission’s Birmingham District Office, said in a press release. “The EEOC will continue to aggressively pursue remedies for victims of sexual harassment in the workplace, particularly young, vulnerable workers. This kind of misconduct adversely affects not only the harassment victims themselves, but also the entire workforce.”
The suit demands a jury trial to determine compensatory and punitive damages. Beavers Inc. and Arby’s have not publicly responded to requests for comment from several outlets, including the Associated Press.
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