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Uber Charge: Police Urge Women To Speak Out As Second Uber Driver Charged With Rape

A Brisbane driver has been charged with raping a 16-year-old girl.

Queensland Police are urging women who have been sexually assaulted by a ride-share driver to come forward after two Uber drivers in Brisbane were charged with rape within a week.

A 37-year-old Aspley man has been denied bail by the Brisbane Magistrates Court after police charged him with raping a teenager in Brisbane last Friday, July 7.

The man picked up the 16-year-old girl in Brisbane's south at around 8:30pm while working for ride-sharing service Uber before sexually assaulting her, police allege.

An Uber spokesperson told the Brisbane Times that the Aspley man's access to the ride-sharing service was blocked immediately when the company learnt about the allegations and the company was assisting police with their inquiries.

"The behaviour described by Queensland Police is absolutely deplorable and our thoughts are with the woman and her family," the spokesperson said.

Police say Friday's arrest is not connected to the alleged triple-rape of a young woman in Brisbane last week. A 47-year-old man was charged over that incident and is currently being held on remand.

In this unrelated attack, the driver allegedly raped the 22-year-old woman three times in his car after picking her up in the inner Brisbane nightclub precinct of Fortitude Valley in the early hours of Thursday July 6. Police fear this suspect may be a serial rapist.

Acting Detective Superintendent Mick O'Dowd has encouraged anyone who has been assaulted while using a ride-sharing service to report it to police.

"Some of the information we obtained during the investigation tends to lend itself to the police's view ... that perhaps there may have been other incidents," he said on Friday morning.

"We don't have any exact details of those incidents, which is why we're making a public appeal."

Last month, a NSW Uber driver was sentenced to nine years behind bars for raping a woman he picked up outside a Sydney nightclub.

The woman, aged in her 20s, was heavily intoxicated at the time of the attack and mistakenly believed she was getting into a taxi.

Muhammad Naveed, 41, claimed the woman consented to sex, but the judge ruled that he had taken advantage of her "intoxicated and sleepy state" and "put forward a palpably false version of events".

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