Nov. 30, 2006 — It was the shocking story — and unbelievable surveillance video — that riveted the nation. A young McDonald's employee humiliated, forced to strip and then to perform a sexual act in the back office, during her work day.
This horrifying ordeal changed one woman's life forever, and put one man on trial, accused of masterminding a bizarre and elaborate hoax. If convicted, David Stewart faced 15 years in prison on charges ranging from solicitation of sodomy, to impersonating a police officer.
Watch "20/20" Friday at 10 p.m. ET
Louise Ogborn was always willing to take on extra shifts at McDonald's in Mount Washington, Ky. Ogborn's mother had health problems and had recently lost her job, so the 18-year-old did whatever she could to help make ends meet.
On April 9, 2004, Ogborn offered to work through the restaurant's evening rush, trying to be helpful and make a few extra dollars.
"I was just going to eat and then clock back in and help until somebody else came along that could help," she said.
But Ogborn couldn't have known that her noble gesture would turn into a terrifying ordeal that she says will haunt her for the rest of her life.
A Startling Accusation
Ogborn was called into assistant manager Donna Summers' cramped office and told that Summers was on the telephone with a police officer.
"She said, 'Here she is. This is the girl you described,'" said Ogborn. "She told me to shut the door."
Summers told Ogborn that the officer on the phone had their store manager on the other line and that he had described her and accused her of stealing a purse from a customer.
"I was like, 'Donna, I've never done anything wrong,'" Ogborn said. "I could never steal — I could never do anything like that. I don't have it in me."
But inside the back office, which had now become an "interrogation room," Ogborn's protests fell on deaf ears.
"She said, 'Well, they said it was a little girl that looked like you in a McDonald's uniform, so it had to be you.'"
It was Ogborn's word against the accusation of a man claiming to be a cop, and she was given a choice: submit to a search or be escorted to the police station.
Listening to 'the Voice'
Ogborn was told to empty her pockets and surrender her car keys and cell phone, which she did. Then the caller demanded that Summers have Ogborn remove her clothes — even her underwear — leaving her with just a small, dirty apron to cover her naked body.
Summers says she never second-guessed what she was being asked to do, as she firmly believed the person she was talking to was a police officer. Ogborn says she trusted her manager to do what was right.
Because it was a busy Friday night, Summers had to leave the office to check on the restaurant. The man on the phone demanded that another employee be left to watch Ogborn until the police arrived and Summers chose 27-year-old Jason Bradley.
"He [Bradley] takes the phone and they're telling him to have me do certain things and drop the apron," she said. "He wouldn't have any part of it."
Bradley walked out in disgust, leaving Summers with no one to watch Ogborn. Then the caller made an odd request, asking Summers to call her fiancé to have him watch the girl.
Summers says she did as she was told.
"I honestly thought he was a police officer and what I was doing was the right thing," Summers said. "I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing."
Surveillance video shows Ogborn broke down in tears.
Two Hours of Torment
Within 15 minutes, Summers' fiancé, Walter Nix, entered the office where Ogborn tugged at the small apron that barely covered her top and exposed her legs up to her buttocks.
Again, Summers says she didn't question the caller and completely trusted her fiancé to be left alone with the girl.
Ogborn says she wanted to run, but that it would have been too humiliating to run through the restaurant naked.
Nix, a 43-year-old exterminator, began following the caller's commands, ordering Ogborn to drop her apron, bend over and stand on a chair.
Then — as ridiculous as it sounds — he told her to do jumping jacks to shake loose anything she might be hiding. Ogborn says that was just the beginning of two more hours of torment.
The demands became more and more bizarre. When Ogborn says that when she failed to address Nix as "sir," the caller tells him to hit her violently on the buttocks over and over. At one point on the video, Ogborn was "spanked" for almost 10 full minutes.
"He told me I was asking too many questions, so he was told to hit me," she said. "I just said, 'Please don't do this.'"
By the end, red welts could be seen on the woman's body.
During it all, Summers periodically came back to the office, and each time, Nix threw the apron at Ogborn, telling her to stay quiet.
"I begged her every time she came in the room," Ogborn said. "'Get me out of here. Please get me out of here."
Ogborn says she even asked the assistant manager to call the police, but each time, she says, Summers told her, "No, we're still waiting for the cop."
Summers denies Ogborn ever asked her to call the police or that the girl pleaded with her.
Ogborn says that after more than three hours of dehumanizing treatment, Nix — again on the instructions of the caller — forced Ogborn to perform a sexual act.
The caller then told Nix to hand the phone back to Summers and instructed her to bring in someone else.
This time, she had Thomas Simms, a 58-year-old maintenance man who worked at the restaurant, get on the phone with the caller, but Simms refused to comply with the caller's strange demands.
"Tom told me, 'This man is asking … for her to drop her apron so I can see her without the apron,'" she recalled. "And I said, 'Do what?'"
Summers frantically called her manager, Lisa Siddons, who the caller claimed had been on the other line all along. But when Siddons answered her phone, she said she'd been sleeping.
It was then that Summers realized, she'd been had.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Segway
NEW YORK (AP) — Segway Inc. is recalling all 23,500 of the self-balancing scooters it has shipped to date because of a software glitch that can make its wheels unexpectedly reverse direction, causing riders to fall off.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is cooperating with Segway on the voluntary recall announced Thursday, said consumers should stop using the vehicles immediately.
Segway has received six reports of problems with the Personal Transporter, resulting in head and wrist injuries. The vehicles were previously known as the Human Transporter.
Segway is offering a free software upgrade that will fix the problem. The upgrades will be done at Segway's 100 dealerships and service centers around the world, according to Segway spokeswoman Carla Vallone, and the company based in Bedford, N.H., will pay to ship the devices to the appropriate center if need be.
It is the second time the scooters, which sell for about $4,000 to $5,500, have been recalled since they first went on sale in 2002. The 2003 recall involved the first 6,000 of the devices sold, and involved a problem that could cause riders to fall off the device when its battery ran out of juice.
Segway Chief Technology Officer Doug Field, who has been involved with the development of the device since its earliest days, said the problem that sparked the latest recall was found while the company was testing its new model. He said a very unusual and specific set of conditions can cause the problem.
The scooter's speed is determined by how far forward the user leans, and if the rider leans too far forward, a "speed limiter" pushes them back to keep the device at its maximum speed of 12.5 mph. The problem happens after the speed limiter tilts back, the rider steps off the device and then gets back on it quickly.
Field said the actions that would cause the problem are of "very low probability, but possible, which then made us go pull every reported accident in the company's history." After the company found the six incidents believed to be related to the problem, it notified the CPSC and got the ball rolling on the recall, Field said.
Field and Segway Chief Executive Jim Norrod would not comment on whether the problem has sparked any lawsuits, and would not give any details of the injuries sustained.
"Any injury is too much to us," said Norrod.
The most famous tumble from a Segway came in 2003, when President Bush tried one out at his family's estate in Maine. The device went down on his first attempt, but Bush stayed on his feet with an awkward hop over the scooter. He quickly got back onboard and was soon cruising around the driveway on the Segway.
NEW YORK (AP) — Segway Inc. is recalling all 23,500 of the self-balancing scooters it has shipped to date because of a software glitch that can make its wheels unexpectedly reverse direction, causing riders to fall off.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is cooperating with Segway on the voluntary recall announced Thursday, said consumers should stop using the vehicles immediately.
Segway has received six reports of problems with the Personal Transporter, resulting in head and wrist injuries. The vehicles were previously known as the Human Transporter.
Segway is offering a free software upgrade that will fix the problem. The upgrades will be done at Segway's 100 dealerships and service centers around the world, according to Segway spokeswoman Carla Vallone, and the company based in Bedford, N.H., will pay to ship the devices to the appropriate center if need be.
It is the second time the scooters, which sell for about $4,000 to $5,500, have been recalled since they first went on sale in 2002. The 2003 recall involved the first 6,000 of the devices sold, and involved a problem that could cause riders to fall off the device when its battery ran out of juice.
Segway Chief Technology Officer Doug Field, who has been involved with the development of the device since its earliest days, said the problem that sparked the latest recall was found while the company was testing its new model. He said a very unusual and specific set of conditions can cause the problem.
The scooter's speed is determined by how far forward the user leans, and if the rider leans too far forward, a "speed limiter" pushes them back to keep the device at its maximum speed of 12.5 mph. The problem happens after the speed limiter tilts back, the rider steps off the device and then gets back on it quickly.
Field said the actions that would cause the problem are of "very low probability, but possible, which then made us go pull every reported accident in the company's history." After the company found the six incidents believed to be related to the problem, it notified the CPSC and got the ball rolling on the recall, Field said.
Field and Segway Chief Executive Jim Norrod would not comment on whether the problem has sparked any lawsuits, and would not give any details of the injuries sustained.
"Any injury is too much to us," said Norrod.
The most famous tumble from a Segway came in 2003, when President Bush tried one out at his family's estate in Maine. The device went down on his first attempt, but Bush stayed on his feet with an awkward hop over the scooter. He quickly got back onboard and was soon cruising around the driveway on the Segway.
Air Bags
MARYSVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Jeaneen Parsons' husband steered their motorcycle to the ground seven years ago to avoid hitting a passenger whose cycle went down on a twisting mountain road in Kentucky.
The couple emerged from the accident with a few road burns and frazzled nerves. The passenger's leg was shattered.
Marifran Mattson lost part of her left leg when the motorcycle she was on was struck by a semitrailer in 2004 near Crawfordsville, Ind.
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was seriously injured June 12 when a car turned into the path of his motorcycle June 12. Roethlisberger, who wasn't wearing a helmet, suffered a concussion, broken nose and jaw and damaged teeth.
As cyclist injuries and deaths increase, motorcycle makers are installing more safety features — making greater use of antilock brakes and adding air bags while stressing safe-rider education and use of helmets.
Some people wonder how effective air bags will be, how much of a market exists, and how much they would save cycle owners on insurance.
Honda Motor Co. added air bags in June to its fully loaded Gold Wing, an 860-pound touring bike designed for distance driving in comfort and made near this central Ohio city.
Yamaha Motor Corp., with U.S. headquarters in Cypress, Calif., is developing an air bag system and is using a scooter with air bags for research in Japan, according to the company's Web site.
"The motorcycle manufacturers are engaging in a lot of R&D in the area of — some would call it safety, some would call it risk management," said Tom Lindsay, spokesman for the Pickerington, Ohio-based American Motorcyclist Association. "It's part of a trend."
The motorcycle industry posted $7.6 billion in sales of 725,000 on-highway bikes in 2004, up from about $4.7 billion and 471,000 bikes sold four years earlier.
Motorcycles accounted for 2 percent of all registered vehicles in 2004 but made up 9.4 percent of all highway deaths, nearly double the 5 percent in 1997, according to government statistics.
Honda's air bag system consists of crash sensors attached to the front fork of the motorcycle. The sensors detect rapid deceleration and send the information to a small on-board computer, which determines whether a crash is occurring.
The computer sends a signal to an inflator, which releases nitrogen gas to deploy the air bag, packed into a dashboard-like module in front of the driver. The process takes a fraction of a second.
The system is designed to keep the driver's body from hitting whatever the motorcycle hit and reduce the chances of the driver being thrown over the handlebars. It is not designed to protect from side or rear impacts or to protect passengers.
Honda began working on its air bag system in 1990 after determining that more than half of the motorcycle accidents that result in deaths or injuries occur when the front of the motorcycle strikes another vehicle or object.
Honda won't say how many air bag-equipped Gold Wings it plans to produce by the time the 2006 model year ends in late September, other than it will be a limited number. Last year, the 600 workers at the plant produced 60,524 motorcycles, including Gold Wings.
Parsons, 45, of Dayton, favors the idea of air bags and doesn't shrink at the added cost — about $1,500 on a $24,000 Gold Wing.
Mattson, associate professor of communications at Purdue University, where she is spearheading a motorcycle-safety campaign, also applauds Honda but said the air bags wouldn't help in many crashes, including the one she was in. And she worries that the air bags might cause riders to dispense with wearing helmets.
"I'm concerned this might send a false sense of security," she said.
Honda officials acknowledge that some people are going to question whether motorcycle air bags will be effective.
"But we've seen so many test videos — you become a believer," said Jan Gansheimer, senior manager of Honda's manufacturing/planning group.
Honda's air bag system has been tested with crash-test dummies and in one case with a human to see what would happen if an air bag deployed accidentally. Honda officials said the air bag didn't knock the driver backward or injure him, affect his field of vision or impact his travel down the highway.
Bob Hartwig, chief economist for the New York City-based Insurance Information Institute, said the insurance benefits of having motorcycle air bags probably would be small because the devices protect only the driver and only in frontal crashes. Air bags in cars protect drivers and passengers in front and side crashes.
Hartwig also said motorcyclists who buy air bag-equipped bikes are probably safer drivers and less likely to be involved in crashes.
Safety has also gone beyond air bags and helmets. Worldwide Riders, a Cheyenne, Wyo.-based motorcycle accessories company, sells vests with protective bladders that inflate as riders are being ejected from their motorcycles.
Harley-Davidson Motor Co., based in Milwaukee, emphasizes training and driver education. The company began opening motorcyling academies in 2000 to train new and experienced riders. About 90,000 riders have taken courses at the schools, which operate in more than 30 states.
Jake Balzer, an analyst with Guzman & Company, an investment banking firm, said there may be somewhat of a market for air bag-equipped motorcycles, but questioned whether Honda will sell that many unless states require motorcycles to have the devices.
"A lot of people riding motorcycles don't even want to wear helmets," he said. "I don't see them going out and spending the extra money to put air bags on their motorcycles."
Tim Buche, president of the Motorcycle Industry Council, said many motorcyclists love new features and will be attracted to air bags.
But he said the market will determine whether the idea will spread.
"If air bags are going to be successful, they are going to be available on other motorcycles," he said. "It remains to be seen."
MARYSVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Jeaneen Parsons' husband steered their motorcycle to the ground seven years ago to avoid hitting a passenger whose cycle went down on a twisting mountain road in Kentucky.
The couple emerged from the accident with a few road burns and frazzled nerves. The passenger's leg was shattered.
Marifran Mattson lost part of her left leg when the motorcycle she was on was struck by a semitrailer in 2004 near Crawfordsville, Ind.
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was seriously injured June 12 when a car turned into the path of his motorcycle June 12. Roethlisberger, who wasn't wearing a helmet, suffered a concussion, broken nose and jaw and damaged teeth.
As cyclist injuries and deaths increase, motorcycle makers are installing more safety features — making greater use of antilock brakes and adding air bags while stressing safe-rider education and use of helmets.
Some people wonder how effective air bags will be, how much of a market exists, and how much they would save cycle owners on insurance.
Honda Motor Co. added air bags in June to its fully loaded Gold Wing, an 860-pound touring bike designed for distance driving in comfort and made near this central Ohio city.
Yamaha Motor Corp., with U.S. headquarters in Cypress, Calif., is developing an air bag system and is using a scooter with air bags for research in Japan, according to the company's Web site.
"The motorcycle manufacturers are engaging in a lot of R&D in the area of — some would call it safety, some would call it risk management," said Tom Lindsay, spokesman for the Pickerington, Ohio-based American Motorcyclist Association. "It's part of a trend."
The motorcycle industry posted $7.6 billion in sales of 725,000 on-highway bikes in 2004, up from about $4.7 billion and 471,000 bikes sold four years earlier.
Motorcycles accounted for 2 percent of all registered vehicles in 2004 but made up 9.4 percent of all highway deaths, nearly double the 5 percent in 1997, according to government statistics.
Honda's air bag system consists of crash sensors attached to the front fork of the motorcycle. The sensors detect rapid deceleration and send the information to a small on-board computer, which determines whether a crash is occurring.
The computer sends a signal to an inflator, which releases nitrogen gas to deploy the air bag, packed into a dashboard-like module in front of the driver. The process takes a fraction of a second.
The system is designed to keep the driver's body from hitting whatever the motorcycle hit and reduce the chances of the driver being thrown over the handlebars. It is not designed to protect from side or rear impacts or to protect passengers.
Honda began working on its air bag system in 1990 after determining that more than half of the motorcycle accidents that result in deaths or injuries occur when the front of the motorcycle strikes another vehicle or object.
Honda won't say how many air bag-equipped Gold Wings it plans to produce by the time the 2006 model year ends in late September, other than it will be a limited number. Last year, the 600 workers at the plant produced 60,524 motorcycles, including Gold Wings.
Parsons, 45, of Dayton, favors the idea of air bags and doesn't shrink at the added cost — about $1,500 on a $24,000 Gold Wing.
Mattson, associate professor of communications at Purdue University, where she is spearheading a motorcycle-safety campaign, also applauds Honda but said the air bags wouldn't help in many crashes, including the one she was in. And she worries that the air bags might cause riders to dispense with wearing helmets.
"I'm concerned this might send a false sense of security," she said.
Honda officials acknowledge that some people are going to question whether motorcycle air bags will be effective.
"But we've seen so many test videos — you become a believer," said Jan Gansheimer, senior manager of Honda's manufacturing/planning group.
Honda's air bag system has been tested with crash-test dummies and in one case with a human to see what would happen if an air bag deployed accidentally. Honda officials said the air bag didn't knock the driver backward or injure him, affect his field of vision or impact his travel down the highway.
Bob Hartwig, chief economist for the New York City-based Insurance Information Institute, said the insurance benefits of having motorcycle air bags probably would be small because the devices protect only the driver and only in frontal crashes. Air bags in cars protect drivers and passengers in front and side crashes.
Hartwig also said motorcyclists who buy air bag-equipped bikes are probably safer drivers and less likely to be involved in crashes.
Safety has also gone beyond air bags and helmets. Worldwide Riders, a Cheyenne, Wyo.-based motorcycle accessories company, sells vests with protective bladders that inflate as riders are being ejected from their motorcycles.
Harley-Davidson Motor Co., based in Milwaukee, emphasizes training and driver education. The company began opening motorcyling academies in 2000 to train new and experienced riders. About 90,000 riders have taken courses at the schools, which operate in more than 30 states.
Jake Balzer, an analyst with Guzman & Company, an investment banking firm, said there may be somewhat of a market for air bag-equipped motorcycles, but questioned whether Honda will sell that many unless states require motorcycles to have the devices.
"A lot of people riding motorcycles don't even want to wear helmets," he said. "I don't see them going out and spending the extra money to put air bags on their motorcycles."
Tim Buche, president of the Motorcycle Industry Council, said many motorcyclists love new features and will be attracted to air bags.
But he said the market will determine whether the idea will spread.
"If air bags are going to be successful, they are going to be available on other motorcycles," he said. "It remains to be seen."
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