08/10/2026
where are the decent men? Where are the decent JUDGES?
More than four thousand women have sued Uber with a version of the same story: that the company they trusted to carry them home safely instead delivered them to a driver who s*xually assaulted them. The scale of what they are describing is staggering -- the New York Times has reported that between 2017 and 2022, Uber received a report of s*xual violence in the United States roughly once every eight minutes. Publicly, the company says it treats these women with care. It calls itself "survivor-centric" and "trauma-informed," has given millions to anti-violence groups, and tells its drivers, in its own training videos, that "s*xual violence is never the survivor's fault."
Then the women go to court, and Uber's lawyers ask them what they were wearing.
The New York Times investigation into thousands of pages of depositions and trial transcripts found that this is not a slip or a rogue attorney but a deliberate strategy: when a woman sues, Uber puts her on trial instead. Its lawyers have asked women to describe the dress they had on the night they were r***d -- "heels or boots or flats?" -- and whether they were wearing underwear.
They have asked whether a woman "felt regret" about how much she'd had to drink, whether she became "extra s*xually active" afterward, and whether she had ever traded s*x for money. They have asked her friends whether she was known to "invite strangers up to her apartment when she was drinking," and asked her husband, under oath, whether she had ever been unfaithful.
Consider the case of the 24-year-old woman identified in court records as Jane Doe. By the time she sat for her deposition last year, logging in from her bedroom in Florida, the man who assaulted her was already in prison. He had pleaded guilty to ra**ng her while she was unconscious during a ride in Tampa, and was serving a ten-year sentence. None of that was in dispute. And still, for hours, Uber's lawyer questioned her: how much vodka, how much Adderall, whether she had felt abandoned by her father or degraded by her mother, what she had worn.
Only when the lawyer began pressing for details about Ms. Doe's s*xual history -- whether she had ever been abused before -- did her own attorney call a halt. "I am not anywhere near done," Uber's lawyer objected. "I'm grateful it is ending," Ms. Doe said. "This kills me."
The interrogation begins long before any courtroom. Through the discovery process, Uber's lawyers demand access to the plaintiffs' most private records -- therapy notes, psychiatric intake forms, years of medical history -- and mine them for anything that might be turned against her. In one case, the company combed through a woman's gynecological records down to references to her birth control and her menstrual periods, alongside notes about childhood abuse and past su***de attempts. In another, it petitioned a judge to force a woman to hand over details of s*xual abuse she had suffered as a child.
In another, it compelled a woman to submit to a psychiatric examination. Uber has deposed the women's parents, spouses, exes, and therapists; in one case, a woman's estranged father learned from Uber's questioning that she had been s*xually abused as a child and had once had an abortion.
The purpose of all this is not subtle, and experts say it is not really about establishing facts. "What discovery in these cases entails is brutal for someone who is contemplating coming forward," said Deborah Tuerkheimer, a Northwestern law professor who studies s*xual violence -- especially against a company with limitless resources and lawyers who "will comb through everything, ask for everything." The strategy re-traumatizes the women who sue and warns off the ones who might, pressuring them to settle quietly or never file at all.
There is a particular cruelty in who is doing the asking. For decades, defense lawyers routinely put s*xual-assault victims on trial for their s*x lives, their drinking, their mental health -- until, beginning in the 1970s, r**e-shield laws were passed to stop it, barring most such evidence from criminal proceedings. But r**e-shield laws apply to criminal trials, and the cases against Uber are civil -- a gap the company has exploited, reviving the old victim-blaming script wholesale.
As Nora Freeman Engstrom, a Stanford legal-ethics professor, put it, Uber's approach recycles "an old and ugly script: if a woman drank, if she rode alone, if it was late, if her memory is imperfect, then maybe she is to blame." The irony, she noted, is that those are "precisely the circumstances when Uber told consumers its service was supposed to protect them" -- the safe ride home after a night out.
That hypocrisy sits at the center of the story, because Uber has spent years and millions of dollars presenting itself as the opposite of what its lawyers do. It has partnered with anti-violence organizations and committed more than fifteen million dollars to the cause. Its own training guide instructs the customer-service agents who field assault reports to "recognize and interrupt victim-blaming attitudes," reminding them that people rarely lie about s*xual assault and that victims do not invite attacks by what they wore or how much they drank. Every one of those principles is one its lawyers violate in a deposition room.
The shift from promise to strategy can be traced to a business calculation. In 2018, Uber ended forced arbitration for s*xual-assault claims -- the clause that had barred customers from suing in open court, forcing their claims into private, confidential proceedings instead. The move was hailed as a victory for survivors. The company announced it in a blog post titled "Turning the Lights On," with its chief legal officer pledging to resolve claims "in a way that is best for the survivor."
But opening the courthouse doors let the lawsuits come by the thousands, just as the pandemic gutted Uber's revenue. Internally, according to people briefed on the discussions, the math changed: the company could save millions if it stopped settling and started fighting. A $145 billion corporation decided that the women accusing its drivers of r**e were a cost to be managed.
And it fights even when there is nothing left to dispute. In a Texas case set for trial this fall, a driver was convicted and sentenced to eleven years in prison for forcing a woman to perform oral s*x as he drove down the highway; his conviction was upheld on appeal. In its filings, Uber still refers to the assault as an "alleged incident." Asked in a hearing whether the company would concede that the assault had occurred, an Uber lawyer said it would not. "Having a criminal trial transcript is a nice start to understanding the factual allegations," he said. "That's all it is. It's just a start."
For the women who have gone through it, the toll is exactly what the strategy is designed to produce. Jaylynn Dean, who a jury found had been r***d by her driver while she drifted in and out of consciousness, won her case against Uber -- and still came away feeling she had lost something. "Focus was shifted away from the actual assault and on to my choices," she said. "It just made me feel like coming forward was a mistake."
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--> If you or someone you know has experienced s*xual assault, the National S*xual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential support 24 hours a day at 1-800-656-4673 and online at https://www.rainn.org
--> To read the New York Times investigation into Uber's legal tactics for fighting s*xual assault lawsuits, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/business/uber-s*xual-assault-lawsuits.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4FA.EcS9.cTfnoTviUih_&smid=url-share
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If you know a teen girl struggling after s*xual abuse or trauma, “The S*xual Trauma Workbook for Teen Girls: A Guide to Recovery from S*xual Assault and Abuse” may help at https://www.amightygirl.com/s*xual-trauma-workbook-girls
Raising kids to have empathy for others and an understanding of consent is one of the most important things parents can do to help reduce the incidence of s*xual assault. To teach children -- girls and boys alike -- about the need to respect others and their personal boundaries, we recommend "Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent, and Respect" for ages 4 to 7 (https://www.amightygirl.com/body-boundaries) and "Consent (for Kids!)" for ages 6 to 10 (https://www.amightygirl.com/consent-for-kids)
There is also a helpful guide for teens on topics such as consent and coercion, "Real Talk About S*x and Consent: What Every Teen Needs to Know," for ages 13 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/real-talk-about-s*x-and-consent
For fictional stories that address r**e and s*xual violence and offer a helpful way to spark conversations with young adult readers around s*xual assault, we recommend "Speak" for ages 14 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/speak), "Girl Made of Stars" for ages 14 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/girl-made-of-stars), and "The Way I Used To Be" for ages 15 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-way-i-used-to-be)
For several powerful memoirs by young women who survived and courageous spoke out after s*xual assault, we highly recommend "Know My Name: A Memoir" (https://www.amightygirl.com/know-my-name), "Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir" (https://www.amightygirl.com/notes-on-a-silencing), and "I Have The Right To" (https://www.amightygirl.com/i-have-the-right-to), recommended for older teens and adults
