In dark corners of the internet, men are goading each other to masturbate in public – and on female shoppers – and post the footage

As she walked the aisles, MR said in an interview, she sensed a man standing close behind her. She turned to confront him and noticed that he was a good six inches taller than her. He was talking in graphic detail about sexual things he wanted to do to her. “You’re so disgusting, get away from me,” she told him, and hurried off to find her friend.

Still, he stayed close, and for a few tense minutes the two of them locked eyes while she waited in line to pay. When at last he left, she thought that was the end of it – until, back outside in the chill of the winter morning, she felt something cold against the back of her leggings.

The man had ejaculated on her.

“I didn’t know how to react. I wanted to kill this man,” said MR, who was 47 at the time, recalling the horror and helplessness she felt as her friend wiped her off with towels. (The Guardian has verified MR’s identity but is not publishing her full name to protect her privacy.)

Hours later, on the advice of a sister who worked in law enforcement, she fished her soiled leggings out of the garbage and took them back to the store to report what had happened. A clerk listened to her account and, not seeming to realize that MR understood Spanish, shouted to a colleague in a backroom: “Tenemos otra.”

“We’ve got another one.”

  • aramis87@fedia.io
    228·
    3 days ago

    This should end up with them on the sex offender registry. It won’t, but it should.

      • Zak@lemmy.world
        78·
        3 days ago

        Under Texas law, it’s indecent assault, a misdemeanor for a first offense in most cases. It’s similar in Pennsylvania. Those are two of the states where incidents in the article took place.

        I’m generally against the recent trend to increase the severity of existing crimes, but I will make an exception here: this should be a felony.

      • HCSOThrowaway@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        1. Assault with a sexual motive =/= “Sexual Assault” in most jurisdictions

        2. This isn’t tantamount to rape. It’s definitely in the ball-park and it’s done by the same kind of people so it should be treated very seriously, especially as a “gateway offense” to prevent rape down the line, but let’s not minimize rape by exaggerating non-rape things.

        • WideEyedStupid@lemmy.world
          7·
          2 days ago

          All these down votes… I guess about half the people here want words to no longer have definitions.

          It’s definitely not rape, but these guys need to get charged with sexual assault or something. If this happens a lot, they’re obviously getting away with it. That’s just disgusting.

          • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
            6·
            2 days ago

            That user is up and down this comment section defending the gooners. That’s why their comments are being rejected and downvoted.

            • WideEyedStupid@lemmy.world
              4·
              2 days ago

              I don’t know anything about his other comments or about the user, but the comment I responded to is 100% true. Rape has a specific definition and this is not it. It’s still indefensible, you’re absolutely right. It’s a disgusting violation and these men need to be charged with sexual assault.

      • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
        47·
        3 days ago

        But Dollar Tree never produced any footage, never apologized for what happened to her and, when challenged in a lawsuit alleging negligence and failure to provide a secure environment, argued that MR was not entitled to damages under Texas law because she had suffered no physical harm. Without video footage, police and private security officers at the River Oaks shopping center were unable to pursue an investigation.

        MR’s lawyers counter that the relevant legal standard is not, in fact, physical harm but “offensive contact”. And, in a testy exchange with a lawyer for Dollar Tree during a sworn deposition, MR vigorously challenged the notion that she had suffered no damage. She described how the incident had rocked her confidence, affected her relationships and made her afraid to go out after dark. “My life is not the same since that incident,” she said. “I totally was caught off guard. I didn’t have a chance to defend myself.”

        When the Dollar Tree lawyer asked her what she wanted out of the lawsuit, she replied: “You [have] to take accountability of what is happening in your stores. You’re causing pain to people. I don’t know if it’s because of the bottom line, or what, but it’s happening and you guys need to stop it.”

        In its statement to the Guardian, Dollar Tree said it was committed to effective safety and security. “Our efforts include ongoing safety education, regular policy reviews, risk assessment and mitigation activities, investments in physical security measures, and collaboration with local law enforcement,” the spokesperson said.

        With MR’s lawsuit, though, the company has attempted to limit the introduction of evidence from assaults in other states and other Dollar Tree outlets as a matter of legal strategy. In an August 2025 email to MR’s lawyers, company attorney Wesley Welmaker described the assault on MR as a “one-off event at Dollar Tree in the River Oaks shopping center”.

        In response, Greenberg told the court that MR’s assault was “anything but a ‘one-off event’” and pointed to 10 cases of sexual assault at Dollar Trees she had documented over the previous year and a half, six of them involving ejaculation.

        A year later, with the lawsuit still mired in preliminary motions and no trial date in sight, Greenberg’s research team has dug up 63 officially documented sex crimes in all – fewer than five a year before 2020 and as many as 18 a year since the December 2023 attack on MR. Sixteen involved masturbation or ejaculation. The company’s attempts to disavow this, Greenberg said in an interview, amounted to “a plethora of stupid arguments” and only underlined what she saw as a pattern of poor corporate governance.

        Dollar Tree, its former sister company Family Dollar (which it sold last summer), and its rival Dollar General have all been under a microscope after multiple reports in recent years of safety violations, improper storage of drugs, rat infestations, poor security, shoplifting and other crimes including sexual assault that have occurred in its stores. Predominantly, the stores serve low-income neighborhoods where there are few alternatives, and critics often accuse them of preferring to endure some degree of criminal behavior occurring in stores and weather fines from the federal government’s workplace watchdog, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), than pay for fully functioning security systems and boost staffing.

        You could’ve read the article to know that it’s an uphill battle to get these men punished for these crimes.

        • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
          4·
          2 days ago

          The text you quoted is the delays experienced by victims trying to sue Dollar Tree. It says nothing about the state going after the sick bastards who did it, besides Dollar Tree refusing to release security footage, which might help identify them. But the state could get a warrant for that, if they gave a shit.

        • village604@adultswim.fanEnglish
          7·
          3 days ago

          I really struggle to see how the business is legally liable for something a disturbed rando does to a customer outside of the business.

          Are we expecting the employees to be forced to act as security guards?

          • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
            36·
            3 days ago

            Greenberg and Blizzard believe the Dollar Tree gooner phenomenon can shed further light on these issues and offer an opportunity to address some of them. In MR’s lawsuit and a similar case in San Diego, their legal filings argue that Dollar Tree should have had more staff and security, should have alerted the police to the sharking episodes on its premises and should have issued a warning to shoppers.

            In the San Diego case, Greenberg and Blizzard found eyewitness and photographic evidence that the same perpetrator had masturbated and ejaculated on another woman in the same store one day before – and returned six days later to assault a third victim. “Dollar Tree did nothing,” they and a team of California lawyers allege in court papers. Dollar Tree did not respond to questions about this accusation.

            The lawyers saw what they allege to be a similar corporate disregard for shopper safety in a case they read about in Knoxville, Tennessee, where a Dollar Tree employee named Collin Miller was caught on camera as he masturbated in front of customers in November 2024. “The [security] video shows the defendant with his penis exposed as he walks past the register where the victim is checking out,” a police report quoted by a local TV station said. “The video also later shows the defendant rubbing his groin area for several minutes at the register while customers are present in the store.”

            Although Miller pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure, he was not fired. And then, eight months later, he was accused of following a family around the store with a camera and taking surreptitious photographs up the 16-year-old daughter’s skirt. Once again, the police investigated and, according to media reports, found 25,000 compromising images of women on his phone. He subsequently pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawful photographing in violation of privacy. Dollar Tree did not respond to questions about the case and Miller’s employment status.

            I expect them to at least fire employees when they masturbate in front of customers and have tens of thousands of photographs of children’s upskirts.