A South Australian Uber driver has been found guilty in the Adelaide Magistrates Court of indecently assaulting a female passenger.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Muhammad Uzair Ehsan, 34, of Prospect, was found guilty by Magistrate Roderick Jensen of two counts of indecent assault following a two-day trial earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Court documents viewed by the ABC stated that the indecent assaults occurred on October 21, 2023, at Camden Park.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The victim said she was happy with the court’s outcome.\u00a0 (ABC News)<\/p>\n
In his judgement, Magistrate Jensen wrote that the prosecution told the court that Ehsan had followed the victim from the car to her front door where the indecent assaults happened.<\/p>\n
“While [she] was walking down the driveway toward her porch, she noticed Mr Ehsan walking closely behind her, by her right shoulder, around 60cm away,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
Uber driver took advantage of woman in ‘vulnerable state’<\/p>\n
He also said it was put to the court that the victim was intoxicated at the time of the indecent assaults but that he was “satisfied that her evidence is reliable”.<\/p>\n
“I find that Mr Ehsan took advantage of [the victim’s] intoxicated and vulnerable state, and subjected her to the two acts of indecent assault while she was at the front door of her unit,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Ehsan’s victim said she was “happy with [the] outcome and relieved to see justice served”.<\/p>\n
“Speaking up wasn’t easy \u2014 but I did it because I didn’t want anyone else to go through what I went through,” she said.<\/p>\n
Every survivor’s ‘voice matters’<\/p>\n
She also said she hoped that by speaking up, she would encourage others to do so.<\/p>\n
“I hope this sends a message to every survivor that they are not alone, and that their voice matters,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ehsan did not comment when questioned by the media outside court.<\/p>\n
In a statement to the ABC, an Uber spokesperson said Ehsan no longer had access to Uber.<\/p>\n
“Any form of assault has no place on the Uber platform. Following the report of this incident, we have removed the driver’s access to the Uber platform,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“Safety is a top priority and we are committed to ensuring we have robust processes and cutting-edge features built into our technology to support the safety of everyone who uses our app.”<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said a breach of Uber’s guidelines “can result in loss of access” to the app”, and that it had a “dedicated team of former law enforcement professionals who are on hand to work with police, respond to urgent issues and help assist during an investigation”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A South Australian Uber driver has been found guilty in the Adelaide Magistrates Court of indecently assaulting a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3443,37489,24278,64,63,37488,1108,48,5864,1105,37484,44,37486,11523,37485,37487],"class_list":["post-42647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-adelaide","tag-adelaide-magistrates-court","tag-assault","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-camden-park","tag-court","tag-crime","tag-driver","tag-guilty","tag-indecent-assault","tag-news","tag-rideshare","tag-uber","tag-uber-driver","tag-victim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}