Dive Brief:

• Charter Foods, a Tennessee-based Taco Bell franchisee, is being sued in Wood County, West Virginia, for allowing a registered sex offender working as a shift supervisor to allegedly sexually harass and inappropriately touch teenage employees, according to two lawsuits filed in February.
• Charter Foods employed Bo Gehling, who was convicted on two counts of sexual assault against teenage girls in 2011, as a shift supervisor beginning in 2019. According to the suits, Charter didn’t conduct a background check on Gehling or look him up in the state’s sex offender registry.  
• A similar 2023 suit against a McDonald’s operator, which allowed a convicted sex offender to work with a teenage girl he harassed and raped, has drawn attention to joint-employer issues at restaurants. The suits against Charter Foods don’t name Yum Foods as a defendant, however. 

Dive Insight:

The lawsuits detail a pattern of alleged failures to respond to employee complaints of sexual harassment. The restaurant industry is a hotbed for such workplace violations, despite corporate rollouts of anti-harassment training and other employee safety measures.

"The core of these lawsuits comes down to not having an effective safety system to protect employees, especially minors, from sexual harassment," Todd Bailess, the attorney for the two women, said in a press release. "Rehiring a known sex offender the day after he was released from prison and allowing him to supervise minors is reckless, jeopardizing the safety of Taco Bell's employees and customers."

According to the suits, Bo Gehling made sexual comments to one worker, Kelsey Wilson, while she was 17 years old, and “offensively touched [Wilson] in the workplace by invading her personal space, leering at
[Wilson], and brushing himself up against the backside of [Wilson].”

Wilson reported her mistreatment to managers, but manager Amber Hall “scoffed at [Wilson] and acknowledged she was aware that Defendant Gehling was a registered sex offender.”

Wilson said Gehling continued to harass her after that. She eventually quit.

Madison Jones, the other plaintiff, worked with Gehling in 2020 while Jones was in high school, and again in 2021 and 2022 after Gehling served about a year in prison for parole violations. In 2022, Jones states, Gehling made sexually inappropriate comments about her body. She reported those comments, but management continued to schedule her to work alongside Gehling, the suit alleges, before Gehling was eventually terminated in mid-June 2022.

Wilson and Jones are both seeking damages from Charter, Gehling, Hall and another manager, Steve France, under the West Virginia Human Rights Act.  

According to the LinkedIn page for Charter Foods, the franchisee operates restaurants from a variety of brands in 13 states. The company said it was not interesting in commenting for this story. Yum Brands did not immediately respond to a request for comment.