Review: Craig Zobel's 'Compliance'

On a busy Friday evening in 2004, a man posing as a police officer called a McDonald’s in Mount Washington, Ky., and claimed to “have corporate” on the line. Identifying himself over the phone as “Officer Scott,” he told Donna Jean Summers, the assistant manager, that a young cashier was suspected of stealing from a customer. The girl would be spared a night in jail, and it would be simpler for everyone, he said, if the employee was searched on the premises. Summers took 18-year-old Louise Ogborn, who fit the description of the alleged thief, to the back office, and over the next three and a half hours followed the man’s increasingly troubling instructions. “Officer Scott” wasn’t satisfied even after the girl was doing naked jumping jacks.

When Summers said she was needed out front to run the restaurant, the caller instructed her to ask her then-fiancé, Walter Nix Jr., a burly 42-year-old exterminator, to come by and watch over Ogborn. The deception was discovered when Summers called her manager, whom the perpetrator also claimed to have on the line. By that time, the caller had coaxed Nix into sexually assaulting the teenager. Summers got probation, Nix got five years, and the two broke off their engagement. McDonald’s settled with Ogborn for $1.1 million.