A Boston woman says she was raped by an Uber driver early Tuesday morning following her birthday party at the Wild Rover bar in Faneuil Hall, the Boston Globe reports.
The woman, who filed a police report in Dorchester Municipal Court, told investigators she recalls the driver asking her after the attack, “I finished, do you want me to pull your pants up for you?”
The suspect, 40-year-old Michael J. Squadrito, was arraigned on a rape charge. He pled not guilty and is being held on $10,000 bail. According to the Globe, Squadrito “remained out of public view during the hearing.”
Darcy Currey, an assistant district attorney, told the Boston Herald, “[The woman] remembered being pulled over on a one-way street. She remembered the suspect getting on top of her, seeing her jeans and underwear had been pulled down... She stated she was sure she did not consent to the actions.”
During the hearing, Squadrito’s attorney Nancy Hurley told the court, “The young lady in the police report indicates she was inebriated, so much so she does not remember portions of what is alleged to have happened.” Squadrito maintains that the incident was consensual. He has been removed from the Uber app.
To say Uber has an issue with sexual assault would be an understatement: Last month, an Uber driver allegedly kidnapped and assaulted a New York woman, drove her 80 miles away from her pickup location over state lines, left her on the side of the I-95 motorway and then charged her $1,047 for the trip. A week prior, a Miami Uber driver allegedly raped a passenger and told police it was a job “perk.” Until spring of this year, Uber forced victims of sexual assault into mandatory arbitration to silence public lawsuits.
In 2016, you might recall, Uber dismissed thousands of rape customer support tickets by dubbing them typos.