Do you want fries with that?

March 30, 2012

A former employee of the Arroyo Grande McDonald’s says she was coerced into prostitution, at times having sex with up to 12 men a night,  by the restaurant’s former manager, according to Courthouse News.

Shelley Lynn filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s USA, her former boss and ex-husband Keith Handley, and his company Iverina in Federal Court.

According to the complaint, in addition to pressuring Lynn into prostitution, Handley engaged in “pimping operations” out of the McDonald’s franchises he owned.

Handley hired Lynn to work as a counter person at the McDonald’s on Grand Avenue in 1982 and they began dating in December 1985, the complaint says.

Lynn claims Handley bought a home in Las Vegas and told her “that she would have to go to work as a prostitute because Handley could not maintain both the Las Vegas home and his home in Arroyo Grande. Handley then began pressuring Lynn on an almost daily basis, arguing that she needed to become a prostitute in a legal brothel, it was no big deal to engage in sex to make money, that she would lose her home and everything she had, which was true,” according to the complaint.

In December 1986, Lynn says, she began working at the Chicken Ranch where she claims she became a “top booker,” and once was required to have sex with 12 men in one night. She tells of an alleged incident where a client grabbed her breast so hard it left a bruised imprint of a hand on her breast.

Lynn claims that McDonald’s works to keep unions out, offers an inferior health care plan and no pension benefits, and promotes a sexist environment.

Handley’s goal, according to the complaint, was to turn her “into a prostitute earning a lot of money — at least for a non-union, low wage McDonald’s employee. At the time Handley began dating Lynn, Handley ordered Mr. McGrady, one of his managers, to terminate Lynn for insubordination which was a sham.”

“This made Lynn extremely vulnerable to Handley’s demands,” the complaint says. “McDonald’s had no policy in place whereby Lynn could have filed a grievance against Handley, Ivernia, and McDonald’s.”

Lynn’s claim says McDonald’s “failed to conduct a due diligence into the moral character of Handley when it sold the franchises to him,” and that McDonald’s “failed to properly supervise and train Handley.”