A Brooklyn woman has filed a lawsuit claiming she was kidnapped and raped by an Uber driver — and accusing the ride-sharing giant of having a “toxic-male culture” that enables assaults on vulnerable passengers.
Amber Moye was 20 when she fell asleep in the backseat 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.
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.
“And if you’re not right mentally you’re not right anywhere else,” she said.
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, filed Nov. 15.
The suit notes that Moye reported the attack to the NYPD’s special victims’ unit, though 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 former Uber employee as saying.
The suit accused Travis Kalanick – one of the company’s founders 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 applicant drivers through FBI databases – instead opting for a “fast and shallow” background check, the lawsuit alleged.
“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, the lawsuit claims.
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, founding partner of Slater Slater Shulman, the law firm representing Moye, told The Post in a statement Thursday.
“While the company has acknowledged this crisis of sexual assault in recent years, its actual response has been slow and inadequate, with horrific consequences,” he said.
Uber is currently facing about 100 sexual assault cases that are being brought together in California – and company lawyers recently lost a bid to remove the term “sexual assault” from that lawsuit’s name.
There were close to 4,000 alleged sexual assault incidents involving Ubers in the US between 2019 and 2020 – down from almost 6,000 in 2017 through 2018, Uber’s own US Safety Report found.
“These are assaults that are happening today, tomorrow, and the fact that the company hasn’t made any changes, it’s just going to mean that this will continue,” Moye’s attorney, Jamie Farrell of Slater Slater Schulman, told the Independent.
The law firm has filed at least 100 sexual assault and harassment claims against Uber, the outlet noted.
Asked about the lawsuit, 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.”
“We are committed to keeping safety at the forefront of everything we do, and we are always working to build innovative features and policies that help make the platform safer for all,” the rep added.
Moye’s suit was filed under New York’s Adult Survivor’s Act, which expired on Nov. 23.
The NYPD said it was legally barred from confirming whether there had been an investigation into Moye’s complaint, but said the department “takes sexual assault and rape cases extremely seriously, and urges anyone who has been a victim to file a police report so we can perform a comprehensive investigation, and offer support and services to survivors.”
With Post wires