A recent story I found on Digg, from ABC News. An 18-year-old McDonald’s employee was forced by her supervisor and the supervisor’s fiancé to strip, humiliated, beaten and then forced to perform a sexual act in the back office, during her work day – all on the instruction of a telephone caller masquerading as a police officer.

The full story and the surveillance camera video can be found here – warning, the video is probably not safe for work, and both are pretty disturbing.

I am more than angry, I’m incredulous. A lot of questions, I’m just bowled over by this story.

How could the supervisor think that this was an appropriate way to treat an employee, regardless of whether or not she was ‘suspected of theft’?

More ridiculous, how could the fiancé possibly have thought the ‘policeman’ was legitimate even after he was asked to spank the girl (for ten minutes, leaving red welts) and then make her perform a sexual act?

Was he, perhaps, enjoying the power he was given so much that he didn’t bother to question the legitimacy of the caller?

If the final employee was intelligent enough to realise that something was not right with the caller, what does that say about the intelligence of the supervisor and her fiancé?

Are Americans so ‘under the thumb’ of the police that they will blindly follow what they are told without questioning it?

Would the supervisor and the fiancé have been so quick to do these things had it been an 18-year-old male employee?

Especially in the case of the fiancé, do you think the fact that both he and the ‘officer’ were male made it feel (to him) more reasonable to do what he was doing?

WHY is it acceptable to make this video public?

WHY is it acceptable to talk about people’s ‘compliance’ and ‘obedience’ but not look into the sexism and male privilege which allowed this to happen in the first place?

So many questions. It makes me sick that we even have to ask.