ABC’s news program 20/20 recently reported about the high number of high school students reporting sexual advances by their bosses. One of the stories they reported on was about a 16 year old girl named Kati Moore from Orange County who is suing Starbucks because her 24 year old boss began demanding she have sex with him and they did nothing to protect her from him. He would even go so far as to send her messages saying, “I’d like to f--- tomorrow.” Moore told ABC that this was an everyday occurrence and she felt like she had to have sex with him in order to keep her job. He had complete control over her job and he also knew her friends and family. Moore said that other supervisors and managers knew what was going on, but nobody did anything to help. Help came when her mother found out what was going on and she reported it to the police. Kati is now suing Starbucks who says that it is not their fault, but her own. They even went as far as to bring out Kati’s sexual history with other men before she even started working at Starbucks. In another article, they asked her if she drank, smoked pot, and had sex and her answer was yes. Tim Horton, 24 years old, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of illegal sex with a minor and served four months in prison. Starbucks is confident that they did nothing wrong and that the case will ultimately be resolved.
ABC also reported on two other cases of this kind of ordeal. The first was again McDonalds with a case of their 16 year old employee, Kasey Ramirez, and a 23 year old employee who brought Ramirez into the back and there grabbed her by her waist and pulled her in close to him. She was able to break away and go report this to a supervisor that man is no longer working for McDonalds. The second case was in a Taco Bell in Memphis, TN where a man raped two of his 16 year old employees and got one of them pregnant. One the victims he attacked had been working with him for about two months before anything happened and he raped the other girl on her first day on the job. The article says that one in three students report unwanted sexual encounters according to a study conducted in Maine. The idea of this article is to raise awareness to employers that while having high school students work for them is great, they need to take of them.
I feel that is not only very important that this story is told, but it is also brave of these girls to come forward and share their stories with the world. High school students are typically good workers because they are earning their own money for the first time and it is still a fun thing for them, but when we don’t protect them and watch out for them I feel the franchise should take responsibility. Since Moore reported that her other supervisors and managers knew what was going on they definitely should have reported it to the right people. Since this did not happen, I fell that Starbucks should take responsibility rather than exploit this young girls’ life. An apology and retribution would go a long way in this case and in showing other high schoolers it is alright to come out if this is happening to them.
This is a very good post. I can see this happening at many points in time and how it affects these teens. Many of these teens do not get the sense of urgency to tell anyone about what has happened or what is going on. They get that "trapped" feeling, in which they believe they should not tell anyone or else something bad will happen. It would be interesting to find out what would happen to the boss' or the people that were trying to force these girls into having sex with them. It is a very horrible thing to do to these girls and the emotional things that they do is unbearable.
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