When the manageress said she had to get back to work, Officer Scott asked if she had a boyfriend who could come in and take over. The manageress called her fiancé who came in and continued to obey Officer Scott’s instructions over the next two hours. The instructions included making the ‘thief’ do knee bends and stand on a desk, and slapping her backside if she refused. The series of humiliating ‘tasks’ culminated in forcing the girl to behave in a sexually indecent manner, all of which was recorded on CCTV.

It transpired that this case was one of a string of over 70 such incidents and eventually the real police did manage to identify the culprit, Dave Stewart, who was charged but acquitted of the offences (though no further calls of this nature have been made since his arrest). However it was not just Stewart who was charged. In the case described above the manageress, Donna Summers, and her fiancé, Walter Nix, were also prosecuted. Nix was sentenced in 2006 to 5 years in prison, Summers was put on probation and Ogborn sued McDonalds and won $6.1 million. You can read numerous accounts of this case, for example here and here and here (with references to Milgram and Zimbardo’s research).

The question is – who was responsible? Stewart? Summers? Nix? Or even the young ‘thief’, Louise Ogborn? Is it reasonable for someone to say “but I was just following orders” or do we have a duty to examine what those orders are and to refuse if they are unreasonable? What would Milgram have made of this?

What do you think?