ALISON Turkos was abducted at gunpoint by a Lyft driver, driven across state lines, gang raped by three men for over 20 minutes in an isolated park and then charged $12.81 by the ride-sharing company, she exclusively told the US Sun.

Turkos' traumatizing experience was just one of about 360 rapes, nearly 4,200 sexual assaults and 10 deaths reported to Lyft between 2017 and 2019, according to Lyft's first-ever safety report published on Friday – nearly three years late.


Turkos' incident happened in October 2017 and is part of an ongoing lawsuit against Lyft, which was filed in 2019 and obtained by the US Sun.

What was supposed to be a three-mile ride from one section of Brooklyn to another became an 18-mile, 79-minute horror trip to an isolated park in New Jersey, according to the lawsuit.

Turkos said she tried to jump out of the car twice, but the child locks were on and the driver kept going, she told the US Sun.

"We pulled into isolated area. I remember two men waiting for us. The driver got out of the car and then returned, opened my door with his gun in hand, and they forcefully and brutally raped me," Turkos said.

"When they were finished, they told me to put my clothes back on," she said.

The driver got back into the car without saying a word and drove her back to New York.

"I saw the sign 'Welcome to New York.' I was thinking he was going to murder me, but at least when my family and friends find my body, I was going to be closer to home. I thought that night, I was going to leave this earth."

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THE NEXT MORNING

Turkos said the driver finally dropped her off at her original destination in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where was let out of the car and allowed to go inside her apartment.

The next morning she said she was in pain, couldn't lift her head off her pillow or remember what happened.

It wasn't until about 7 p.m. that night that she finally had enough strength to take a shower, but even then she couldn't stand.

"When I used the toilet, I saw I was bleeding," she told the US Sun.

She saw her Lyft receipt was for over $100 and that's how she found out she was in New Jersey and filed a written complaint to Lyft, which was elevated to the company's internal 911.

"All they did was refund me some money. They charged me $12.81 because that would've been the cost of the ride,' Turkos told the US Sun.

MEMORIES RETURNED IN PIECES

As she challenged the $12.81 charge on her card, pieces of the brutal rape came back to her in pieces.

The bank contacted the police, and the Brooklyn SVU worked with Turkos on the case.

"When I started to piece things together, I slowly started to remember what happened," Turkos told the US Sun.

"As time went on, I had this reoccurring night terror like a memory of being in the back of car. It didn't even seem like a memory. It was more of a dream, a reoccurring dream."

Her rape kit – done two days after her attack – showed bruising and semen from at least two men, according to the lawsuit.

The suspect was never arrested, and her civil lawsuit against Lyft is ongoing.

LYFT'S STATEMENT WITH REPORT

Jennifer Brandenburger, head of policy development and research, said in a statement on Lyft's Blog after the report was released saying, "Safety incidents on Lyft are statistically very rare."

"The type of safety incidents detailed in this report occurred on 0.0002% of rides, and well over 99% of all rides occur without any safety report at all," she said in the written statement.

"These rates are in line with, and in some categories better than, what has been reported by Uber, showing that overall, the prevalence of reported safety incidents across the rideshare industry is very low.'

Bradenburger went on to say "that even one is too many" and listed steps to curtail the number of sexual assaults by Lyft drivers including screening drivers, in-app safety features and a 24/7 safety team.

Lyft didn't respond to US Sun's request for comment.

TURKOS' RESPONSE TO THE LYFT REPORT

Turkos read the report and Lyft's blog post response, and said the company sees victims as numbers.

The sexual assaults were divided into five categories: non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part, non-consensual touching of a sexual body part, non-consensual kissing oaf a sexy body part, attempted non-consensual sexual penetration and non-consensual sexual penetration.

"They don't see victims and survivors as three dimensional humans. Rape and murders are just safety incidents," she told US Sun.

"Everything in this report is harm that they have caused, and they're trying to shift the narrative to say these numbers aren't bad and people can trust them," she said.

Turkos said if Lyft is serious about preventing these types of violence, the company should include survivors like herself on its safety advisory council.

"I believe that the people who are most impacted need to be at the center," she said. "Ride-share sexual assault survivors are being erased. i think that's number one in solving this problem.

LYFT VERSUS UBER

Lyft promised to release its report before the end of 2019 after Uber released its safety report.

At the time, Uber said it received about 6,000 reports of sexual assaults between 2017 and 2019 out of 2.3 billion trips in the United States.

The Lyft report didn't include the number of trips but claimed in the report that is has a 0.0002 percent of the incident rate compared to Uber.


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