A New York woman claims her Uber driver kidnapped and raped her

A woman in New York has filed a sexual assault lawsuit against Uber, claiming she was kidnapped and raped by a driver on the ride-sharing app.

In a complaint filed last month in Kings County, Amber Moye said she was assaulted by an Uber driver on or about December 30, 2018, in Brooklyn, New York.

“It messed me up mentally more than anything else,” Ms. Moye said in an emotional interview with The Independent“And if you’re not feeling well mentally, you’re not feeling well in other ways either.”

The lawsuit describes how Ms. Moye ordered an Uber home after a night of drinking. The 25-year-old, who was drunk, fell asleep in the back seat of the car, court documents say. When she woke up, the car was parked and the driver was sitting in the back seat with her.

Without knowing exactly what had happened, Mrs Moye got out of the car and went home.

The following day, Ms Moye began to experience vaginal pain at work, which she believed might have been the result of an assault.

She talked to her family and decided to go to the hospital to get checked out.

At Brookdale Hospital Medical Center, officers administered a rape kit and confirmed that Ms. Moye had been assaulted, and the New York Police Department’s Special Victims Unit came to the hospital to question her, the complaint says.

In a written statement on the case, an Uber spokesperson said: “Sexual harassment is a terrible crime and has no place in our society or on the Uber platform.” They said the company is committed to safety and is working to develop “innovative features and policies that help make the platform safer for everyone.”

“While we cannot comment on pending litigation, we take all reports of this nature very seriously,” the spokesman said.

Ride-hailing drivers sexually harassing their passengers has been a known problem for nearly a decade. In 2022, Uber released a U.S. safety report with data on sexual harassment and assault from 2019 to 2020. During that period, the company said it recorded more than 3,000 incidents. However, that number was lower than in previous years.

According to the company, 5,981 incidents occurred between 2017 and 2018.

Uber has been under increasing pressure to change its safety measures for years. In 2014, the Indian region of Delhi banned the company from operating after one of its drivers allegedly sexually harassed a passenger. The driver had been arrested three years before the attack on suspicion of raping another passenger.

The company is currently battling about 100 sexual assault cases that have been consolidated in California. Uber’s lawyers fought to remove the term “sexual assault” from the name of the lawsuit, but that request was rejected by a U.S. court panel on Tuesday.

Uber is not the only ride-sharing company facing this kind of scrutiny. In recent years, female riders have sued similar companies, claiming they were raped, kidnapped or sexually assaulted while using their apps.

Ms. Moyes’s lawsuit against Uber and Raiser LLC, a subsidiary of the company, was based on New York State’s now-expired Adult Survivors Act. That law allowed adult victims of sexual abuse to file civil lawsuits against their abusers during a one-year look-back period, regardless of when the crime occurred.

The lawsuit is one of at least 100 cases of sexual assault and harassment filed against Uber by the law firm Slater Slater Schulman LLP, which represents Ms. Moye.

“These are attacks that are happening today and tomorrow, and the fact that the company has not made changes means this will continue,” said Jaime M. Farrell, an attorney at Slater Slater Schulman LLP who is representing Ms. Moye.

Neither Ms. Moye nor her lawyers know whether her driver was ever prosecuted.

However, her own life was disrupted. Ms Moye said the attack left her humiliated, hurt and deprived of her dignity and personal security. Due to the mental suffering, she lost her job as a hostess at an airport and is currently unemployed.

“There’s nothing you can do if you’re not feeling well mentally,” she said.

But she is determined to speak out and use her story to help other women. She wants Uber to change the way it vets its drivers by conducting more stringent background checks and removing drivers who have complaints.

“This happens too often,” Ms Moye said.