After six months of waiting, hoping, worrying, the email finally arrived. I took several deep breaths to calm my racing heart before clicking on the attachment. Scanning through the opening paragraphs of HR jargon, I reached a paragraph bluntly entitled: ‘Rape’.
It read: ‘Despite trying, [we were] unable to speak to the alleged perpetrator.’ There were a few further lines noting that my experiences must have been ‘difficult’ and that I was ‘brave’ for taking part in the investigation.
And that, as far I could see, was that.
At work at the time, I was left sobbing in a corner of my office. I had upturned my life once more, torn open old wounds, gone over and over it — and for what? To be left feeling that what had happened didn’t matter; that I didn’t matter.
Seven years before, just eight days after my 18th birthday, I had been raped. A devastating ordeal that had triggered a spiral of shame and self-recrimination, impacted subsequent relationships and led to estrangement from my family and a suicide attempt.
My rapist had been a colleague from McDonald’s, where I had worked part-time. The email was from the fast-food giant after they conducted an investigation triggered by my writing about the attack in this newspaper.
I had felt compelled to speak out last summer when headlines abounded about the toxicity of the work culture at McDonald’s. Employees alleged that sexual assaults, racism and homophobia were rife. In a BBC investigation, one former employee alleged that a male co-worker would touch much younger female staff sexually, in the cramped confines of the kitchen.
Telling the world about the most vulnerable moment of my life was the scariest decision I had ever made, but when McDonald’s got in touch, wanting to investigate the ‘appalling and deeply disturbing’ allegations, I again summoned all the strength I could muster.
I endured a three-hour interview with the external lawyer McDonald’s had assigned to investigate, provided contact details for key witnesses, a recording of the harrowing two-hour police interview that had ultimately led to nothing and police screenshots of the text messages my rapist sent admitting he raped me.
Doing so was re-traumatising on many levels, but I told myself it was worth the pain if it finally resulted in some sort of justice. So to be dismissed via email felt bruising, to say the very least.
Tragically, my case is a single drop in an ocean of women let down by an inept judicial system. In the year to December 2021, there were 67,125 rape offences recorded — an all-time high. Only 5 per cent of those resulted in a charge, and it can be up to five years before cases actually reach court. I now know that the corporate world is no different.
I had just turned 17 when I joined McDonald’s while studying for my A-levels. Initially everything seemed normal. But over the next few months, there was a creeping sense of apprehension attached to shifts which I didn’t quite understand.
I was deemed young and pretty enough to be put in customer-facing roles: ‘t**s on tills’, as the unspoken rule decreed. I began to notice that male employees made up excuses to talk and flirt with me away from prying eyes.
My rapist often worked out of view of the main restaurant and kitchen. He would corner me in corridors, make up excuses to talk to me and send flirtatious online messages. I thought of him as somewhat over-friendly, but nevertheless kind. But when I told him I was leaving in late 2016, everything changed.
He claimed to be devastated, saying he’d had a crush on me since my first ever shift and had been terrified to tell me. He said he was determined to make me his girlfriend and, after weeks of coercion, I agreed to meet with him one morning, not long after my final shift. He insisted on coming to see me at my home.
Once there he assaulted me, forced me to carry out sex acts on him and raped me.
I am convinced this man felt he could act with impunity because of the grossly misogynistic attitude among male staff members that the BBC’s investigation found was pervasive across the whole corporation.
He may not have punched me or strangled me, but the pain I felt that day was the worst of my life.
I had never had sex before, so when he suddenly plunged his hand down my underwear and three of his fingers inside of me, my body clamped into a spasm of shock. I said all the ‘right’ things. I told him I didn’t want to. I told him he was hurting me. I said no. Reduced to desperation, I was left begging him to stop.
But he pushed me to the floor, was on top of me, and in a split second I knew there was nothing that I could do to stop him. Pure terror took over and I froze.
Afterwards, he acted as if nothing had happened. Petrified and still in shock, it wasn’t until hours later, when I phoned ChildLine in tears, that I began to realise what he had done to me. Desperate to rid myself of his lingering presence, I showered and threw my clothes in the wash — but in doing so I inadvertently destroyed vital DNA evidence. I never wore the clothes again.
The next day, my best friend and I sent a message confronting my attacker. I felt physically sick when he responded by claiming he ‘didn’t really understand’ when I told him no and begged him to stop.
It astounds me still that he didn’t ever deny that he had raped me. Instead, he said he ‘would never treat you like that ever again’, and ‘I care about you more than anything’.
It was ten days before I found the courage to tell the family member I was living with. Then I went to the police, recounting the attack in a gruelling video interview. I allowed them full access to phone records, employment history, school reports. Yet again, I did the ‘right’ thing.
But they submitted the file to the CPS five months later, by which time the CPS concluded there was not enough evidence to convict my attacker. The police took great care to explain that it was my fault it had resulted in no prosecution — despite the fact that they failed to interview witnesses until months after I reported the attack; they also repeatedly failed to turn up to scheduled interviews with them.
Because the rape had happened after the end of my contract, I never thought to report it to McDonald’s.
Meanwhile, the attack continued to take its toll on me. At university I became suicidal and was admitted to hospital after self-harming. A matter of months later I was again rushed to A&E after overdosing.
In the seven years since, I have rebuilt my life, forged a successful career as a writer and finally feel as if this attack no longer controls my life.
And after speaking out, publicly, McDonald’s took my allegations seriously, naming them ‘appalling and deeply disturbing’. The company said it wished to ‘investigate thoroughly and take the swiftest necessary action’.
It passed on a phone number for me to call, and a member of their team gave me the spiel about how McDonald’s was improving as a company and was keen to investigate the rape, the circumstances leading up to it, and the wider working atmosphere in the restaurant where I was employed.
A week later I was contacted by the law firm hired to investigate its failings. In a single three-hour interview, the KC told me he didn’t need to ask me many questions about the rape because I had provided him with the police documents.
Looking back at the two-hour tape of the police interview is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Watching my broken self, my blank stare, my sobs, my shock as I was asked question after question — ‘Who took off your underwear?’ ‘Did it hurt?’ ‘Did you tell him it hurt?’ ‘How many times did you tell him to stop?’ — is not something I would wish on anyone. Even him.
The only question the lawyer asked was whether it was ‘only the sexual intercourse’ I had not agreed to. I had to explain how I did not consent to anything that man did to me that day — and how, at each moment, I clearly expressed that lack of consent. I answered everything he asked about work practices in detail. I gave him phone numbers and email addresses for key witnesses, including my best friend.
I never spoke to the lawyer again, and although he did get in touch with some of my former colleagues to discuss the working environment, he never contacted anyone who knew I had been raped.
Nearly six months later, I received the outcome via email. A member of the HR team phoned me to discuss it four days later. To my surprise, she was under the impression I had been regularly updated throughout the process.
She was shocked when I told her I had had no contact with anyone in months. She later told me that they ‘had expected our investigators to maintain contact with people throughout the process’.
Since that call, I now know, emphatically, that there will never be any accountability or punishment for the man who did this to me — as they had been ‘unable to speak to the alleged perpetrator’.
It wasn’t until a subsequent email that McDonald’s explained what this meant. They had sent a single message to the email address they had for him on file, only to receive no response. They told me that in such a situation there was ‘nothing that we can do’ to force him to respond, as they do not have statutory powers to investigate crimes. The investigation into the rape ended.
Though the attack did not happen on McDonald’s premises, and took place after I left the company, I strongly feel that it was only possible because of my McDonald’s bosses turning a blind eye to predatory behaviour during my time in the workplace.
McDonald’s external lawyer found that ‘it was common for female employees to be placed in customer facing roles’ — in reference to the ‘t**s on tills’ tactic. He also found that, amongst other things, ‘in the past, some male crew members, on occasion, made comments to and about their female colleagues’.
They assured me that policies have since been updated to protect staff. Despite this, I believe the ‘investigation’ was a hollow display of concern for PR purposes. This had been my final chance at receiving any sort of recognition for what I have been through.
I held out the vain hope that, finally, my rapist would face some semblance of punishment. Or, at the very least, that my ordeal would be more fully acknowledged by those who failed to implement protective measures for their staff. Instead, I am left with an egregious sense of injustice. The pain of re-probing such a hopeless period of my life was, unequivocally, not worth this.
A McDonald’s spokesperson told the Mail: ‘Last year, Elizabeth contacted us to report an incident involving a former colleague, in a non-work environment, that occurred a few months after she finished her employment with us. We immediately ordered an independent King’s Counsel-led investigation pursuing every available line of inquiry.
‘These allegations came to light after both employees had left the business, limiting the KC’s powers of inquiry and recourse.
‘While we fully appreciate that the findings do not reflect the conclusion that Elizabeth was seeking, this does not in any way undermine her courage in coming forward. There is absolutely no place for harassment, abuse, or discrimination of any kind at McDonald’s; all proven breaches of our code of conduct will be met with the most severe measures we can legally impose, up to and including dismissal.’
In reference to the police investigation, a West Mercia Police spokesperson told the Mail: ‘We launched an investigation as soon as we received the report. An arrest was made within 24 hours, all available evidence was gathered, and a file submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service less than five months later. We commend Miss Haigh for her bravery in talking about her experiences and are sorry to hear she was unhappy with the handling of her case.’
Their words give me no comfort. My attacker stole years of my life. I didn’t have sex again for three years after the attack. I developed such severe vaginismus — where feelings of fear cause your vaginal muscles to uncontrollably tighten in response to attempts at penetration — that it was, for a time, impossible. Even to this day, relationships remain hard.
The attack still haunts my waking moments, reappearing in torrid nightmares. It will never leave me. Yet my rapist roams free.
Meanwhile, I must scrape together the remnants of my mental health and restart my life once again following this latest setback. I shared my story last year because I wanted someone to be held accountable. I am losing hope anyone ever will be.
- If you are affected by any of the issues in this article, contact Rape Crisis on 0808 500 2222, or the Samaritans on 116 123.
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Elizabeth Haigh
