UBER IS SUED IN ‘RAPE’
‘Bad’ driver screening
A Brooklyn woman has filed a lawsuit charging she was kidnapped and raped by an Uber driver — and accusing the ridesharing giant of having a “toxicmale culture” that enables assaults on vulnerable passengers.
Amber Moye was 20 when she fell asleep in the back seat of an Uber in Brooklyn on the night before New Year’s Eve 2018 — and woke to be assaulted by the driver who’d climbed in beside her, according to her Brooklyn Supreme Court suit, filed Nov. 15.
The “disgusting and depraved” attack left her “humiliated, violated” and “robbed . . . of her dignity and personal safety,” the filing states.
“It just really messed me up mentally more than anything else,” Moye, now 25, told The Independent in an article published Wednesday.
‘Toxic culture’
Moye went to Brookdale Hospital Medical Center the day after the alleged assault, when she woke up with vaginal pain, and a rape kit confirmed she’d been attacked, according to her lawsuit.
The suit notes that Moye reported the attack to the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit, though it doesn’t state if it was fully investigated or if the driver was ever identified.
Moye is now suing Uber and one of its subsidiaries for negligence, liability and related charges on the grounds that the company’s “toxic-male culture” translated to a blasé attitude toward rider safety.
Uber became aware of sexual assaults by drivers as early as 2014 but channeled its $1 “Safe Rides Fee” program for profit, instead of implementing concrete safety measures, the lawsuit alleges.
“[W]e boosted our margins saying our rides were safer . . . . [It] was obscene,” the filing quotes one ex-Uber employee as saying.
The suit accused Travis Kalanick — an Uber founder and former CEO — of driving a culture that prioritized growth over safety by streamlining the driver application process to a point that endangered potential users.
Under Kalanick, Uber “abandoned” fingerprinting applicants and did not run them through FBI databases, instead opting for a “fast and shallow” background check, the lawsuit alleges.
‘Breach of duty’
“The actions of Uber’s executives and board members demonstrate Uber’s contempt for women and myopic focus on profits,” the suit states, noting that former Uber employee Sarah Fowler recounted how she also allegedly experienced sexual harassment from a company higher-up that was swept under the rug by management.
Uber “has breached its duty of reasonable care” and the “implied and express covenants arising from its contract with its passengers” by allegedly skirting safety measures that could have prevented the assault, per the lawsuit.
The mental suffering Moye said she felt in the aftermath of the alleged attack led to her losing her job as an airport hostess, and she is still unemployed, according to the Independent.
“Uber’s whole business model is predicated on giving people a safe ride home, but rider safety was never their concern. Growth was, at the expense of their passengers’ safety,” Adam Slater, of Slater Slater Shulman, the law firm representing Moye, told The Post in a statement Thursday.
A spokesperson for Uber told The Post Thursday: “Sexual assault is a horrific crime, and has no place in our society or on the Uber platform. While we cannot comment on pending litigation, we take any report of this nature very seriously.”