Charges have been dropped against an Uber driver accused of raping a woman in April.
In May, the driver, who will not be named by The Daily Wire because he is a victim, was charged with sexually assaulting a woman in his SUV after picking her up as a passenger. He was ordered to be held without bail, based on the woman’s claims.
The woman, who has not been named in news articles, claimed the male Uber driver picked her up after she left a party in Franklin, Massachusetts, early one morning. The woman ordered the Uber because she was too drunk to drive to her friend’s house, CBS Boston reported. The woman claimed the Uber driver stopped short of her destination and then raped her for more than an hour in the back seat of the vehicle. She claimed she received bruises on her arm, leg, and back as a result of the attack.
Uber records showed the 3.53 mile trip did last one hour and 13 minutes, but the driver’s attorney, Robert Carmel-Montes, said the woman had spent the hour talking about her problems.
“There was no assault here,” Carmel-Montes told reporters in May. “I think that the facts will bear out here there’s a predator in this case, but it’s not the man behind bars.”
“I think the facts will bear out that the alleged victim knew exactly what she was doing,” Carmel-Montes continued. “She left him her phone number at the very end of their interaction.”
As to the length of the ride, Carmel-Montes said the woman was “discussing all of her problems with him and she had asked to be dropped off a little bit before her final destination, claiming that there were dogs or something outside and she didn’t want them barking while she was talking to him.”
Four months later, DNA evidence excluded the Uber driver as having committed the alleged rape, and the charges were dropped. He had worked for rideshare companies for five years without incident but was let go as soon as the woman made her allegation.
There is no indication the woman who made the claim will be arrested.
This is not the first ride-hailing driver to be falsely accused of rape. In August, Linda Hood was found guilty of perverting the course of justice after she claimed a taxi driver detoured from their route in order to rape her. Tracking data proved no such detour was taken. Hood also claimed the driver who raped her was in his 50s and was clean-shaven, yet the accused driver was 29 and had a full beard. Still, her accusations sent him and another taxi driver with a similar license number to jail for nearly a full day. In this case, DNA also proved the men were not responsible.
Hood maintained her status as a victim for nearly two-and-a-half years before finally accepting her claims were false.
In September 2017, another woman, Sophie Pointon, was sentenced to 16 months in prison after falsely accusing her taxi driver of assaulting her five months earlier. The falsely accused driver proved his innocence with a voice recording, which showed Pointon was “extremely intoxicated and became aggressive after he refused to take her £10 because it was covered in kebab oil,” as reported by The Daily Wire’s Amanda Prestigiacomo.