HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — A former NASA engineer has filed a federal lawsuit against four women who accused him of sexual assault, as well as the City of Houston and two Houston police detectives.
Eric Sim was fired from his job at NASA in 2024 after seven counts of sexual assault were filed against him. The charges were dismissed a year later.
At the time the charges were filed, investigators said they found video of sexual encounters on Sim’s electronic devices and a spreadsheet with the names of 437 women Sim allegedly had sex with.
One woman told police she thought she’d been drugged prior to an assault and contracted an STD.
“Once we got to the point where we determined we couldn’t prove the cases, we did what’s right and dismissed it,” Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told Eyewitness News after the charges were dropped.
In his lawsuit, Sim claims all of his sexual encounters were consensual and that his accusers concocted claims they’d been assaulted after learning they weren’t the only women in his life.
The suit also claims Houston police detectives prepared “false probable cause affidavits.”
“They were aware of inconsistencies in the stories that they were being told,” said Sim’s New York-based attorney Kimberly Lau.
In the suit, it’s also claimed that police withheld evidence exonerating Sim from the DA’s office, including video of one accuser describing her relationship with Sim as consensual.
“The police authorities had possession of that evidence for a year. What happened here was a miscarriage of justice,” said Lau.
While the charges were dropped, Amy Smith with the Harris County Domestic Violence Coordinating Council says that doesn’t mean the accusers weren’t being truthful.
“You kind of have to go back to what is consent? What does consent mean? And, you know, consent is different for each individual,” said Smith.
She worries the lawsuit could cause victims of sexual assault to think twice about coming forward.
“To go through the process as far as they’ve gone through the process and then have someone sue you for it, it’s scary. It is a scary thing to happen,” said Smith.
Lau said Sims has struggled to find work since his dismissal from NASA.
“The last few years of my life have been scarred by a justice department that was meant to protect me being turned against me,” Sim said in a written statement released through his attorney. “I look forward to justice being served for all.”
The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages.
The City of Houston has not responded to ABC13’s request for comment.
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