PHOENIX — What should have been a fun night out for Katherine Rasta turned into a living nightmare. Now she’s sharing her story in hopes that no other rideshare passenger is ever sexually assaulted.
It was another hot weekend night on June 26, 2021, when Rasta met some friends. At the end of the evening, she ordered a Lyft car to give her a ride home.
“I honestly didn’t think twice about it,” Rasta recalled.
That’s when the nightmare began. When she first entered the car, she knew something was off; the driver was staring at her in the rearview mirror. A few minutes later, he started to make sexual advances toward her.
“He began to ask me weird questions like, ‘do you party?’" she said. “When I said no, surprisingly, he said he wanted to get a hotel room with me, smoke crystal meth and have sex.”
Unable to exit the vehicle, Rasta said the driver then sexually assaulted her. Afterward, he took her phone and copied her phone number. She says he told her if she said anything, he knew where she lived and where her friends lived.
On Wednesday, lawyers from Rasta and 16 other Lyft drivers and passengers filed 17 lawsuits against the rideshare company, alleging Lyft did not do enough to protect drivers and passengers.
“Lyft fails to consistently make an alert if the driver diverts substantially from the correct route or fails to reach the destination,” said Tracey Cowan, an attorney with Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise, who represent the 17 plaintiffs. “Either of which can be a sign of a physical or sexual attack."
Peiffer Wolf didn’t disclose what monetary awards or specific policy changes they are seeking in their lawsuit, only to say in a statement:
“No amount of money will make this right or undo the assaults that occurred.”
Lyft responded to the lawsuits by releasing a statement of its own:
“We’re committed to helping keep drivers and riders safe. While safety incidents on our platform are incredibly rare, we realize that even one is too many. Our goal is to make every Lyft ride as safe as possible, and we will continue to take action and invest in technology, policies, and partnerships to do so.”
“Nobody should go through the trauma that still haunts me today,” Rasta said.
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