Dollar Tree faces lawsuit over 'gooner' sexual assault pattern

Online subculture encourages attacks, lawyers say

A woman known in court papers as MR said she was assaulted at a Houston Dollar Tree in December 2023 when a man followed her through the aisles and later ejaculated on her leggings in the parking lot. Two and a half years later, her lawsuit has revealed what her lawyers describe as a nationwide pattern of similar attacks at Dollar Tree stores — acts the company has characterized as isolated, but that a growing body of evidence links to an online subculture of men who masturbate in public and post footage for attention.

MR, a 47-year-old Houston business owner, said in an interview, “I totally was caught off guard. I didn’t have a chance to defend myself.” The Guardian has verified her identity but is not publishing her full name to protect her privacy. After reporting the incident to a store clerk, MR said the clerk shouted to a colleague in Spanish — “We’ve got another one” — indicating prior reports at the same location.

Her lawyers, Anna Greenberg and Ed Blizzard, soon discovered a pattern that crossed state lines. They documented 63 officially recorded sex crimes at Dollar Tree or its former sister chain Family Dollar, with the annual rate rising from fewer than five before 2020 to as many as 18 per year since MR’s assault. Sixteen involved masturbation or ejaculation. The cases included a freshly hired sheriff’s deputy, a Dollar Tree employee, and multiple incidents at the same store on consecutive days.

Greenberg said, “We couldn’t believe how big the scale was.”

The lawyers also uncovered an online subculture they say directly encourages the acts. Participants call themselves “gooners” — men who bond over obsessive masturbation — and refer to public ejaculation as “sharking” or “tagging.” Some post videos of assaults, including a user named “Goon-God” who offered more than 200 videos for $25 on an amateur porn site, with a promotional clip that appeared to show an attack on an oblivious Dollar Tree shopper.

In a separate case in Fern Park, Florida, a man arrested after filming himself masturbating at a Dollar Tree told police he did so regularly and uploaded the videos to an OnlyFans page, according to his arrest report.

Criminologists and sociologists said the online community provides reinforcement. Michael Halpin, a sociologist at Dalhousie University, said, “They’re not just doing this for personal gratification. They want an audience to engage with it, and they want other men potentially to do it too.”

Adam Lankford, a criminologist at the University of Alabama, said the accessibility of pornographic material and the lure of fame in a digital attention economy have fueled such behavior. “To some fringe individuals, this form of provocative behavior, no matter how distasteful, can be seen as a ticket to their own form of attention.”

The choice of Dollar Tree as a favored location appears connected to conditions the company has been cited for repeatedly: inadequate security, understaffing, and cluttered aisles that provide cover for perpetrators. In 2023, the Biden administration reached a settlement with Dollar Tree and Family Dollar under which the companies agreed to pay $1.35 million in outstanding fines and overhaul workplace safety arrangements. An OSHA administrator had earlier accused Dollar General — a similar chain — of valuing “profits more than the safety of the people who work in their stores.”

In a statement to the Guardian, Dollar Tree said it was “committed to maintaining a safe and secure environment” for its staff, customers and visitors. The company said it takes reports of inappropriate behavior “extremely seriously” and cooperates with law enforcement.

But in the lawsuit, the company argued that MR was not entitled to damages under Texas law because she suffered no physical harm, and described the assault as a “one-off event at Dollar Tree in the River Oaks shopping center,” according to an August 2025 email from company attorney Wesley Welmaker.

Greenberg said the company’s response amounted to “a plethora of stupid arguments.” MR told a Dollar Tree lawyer during a deposition that the company needed to “take accountability of what is happening in your stores. You’re causing pain to people.”

Psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster, who teaches at the New School in New York, said the degradation of women at a store catering to low-income shoppers is emblematic. “A dollar store is the most abject place, where people who are already at the bottom go because they can’t afford anything else. … There’s something about that that feels so sad and tragic.”

The phenomenon has extended beyond dollar stores. In Tempe, Arizona, a man filmed himself masturbating at a coffee shop drive-through and later died by suicide. A group of supporters organized a protest at the coffee shop, calling him “goonlord” and dubbing the event a “gooneral.” Halpin said, “They find it funny that the women are getting degraded. That’s what they enjoy.”

MR said she has found no peace two and a half years after the assault. She described feeling anger and distress, and said the incident affected her relationships and made her afraid to go out after dark. “My life is not the same since that incident,” she said. “I feel like crying, and then I get so fucking angry.”