She met him on Hinge.
The two gathered for drinks in Denver’s Highland neighborhood in January 2023. Two shots later, Alexa said she was “completely intoxicated” at a level that did not match the number of drinks she had. She remembers tripping up the stairs to his apartment, but that’s where her memory of the night ends.
She slowly pieced together what happened with her ruined clothes, home security camera footage, medical testing and social media sleuthing, Alexa said.
Alexa is one of more than a dozen women who reported being assaulted by convicted serial rapist Dr. Stephen Matthews between 2019 and 2023. The former Denver cardiologist used dating apps to target and lure women, prosecutors said.
The Denver Post is withholding Alexa’s full name because it does not identify victims of sexual assault.
Matthews was convicted in August 2024 on 35 felony counts of assault and sexual assault and sentenced to 158 years in prison two months later.
Now, some of his victims are coming forward after the dating apps that they say enabled Matthews’s attacks. Match Group’s apps, including Hinge and Tinder, were “designed with deliberate disregard for the foreseeable problem of rape,” the lawsuit stated.
Match Group, a global leader in the dating app industry worth nearly $8 billion, ignored clear warning signs about predators like Matthews and failed to take basic steps to protect its users, according to the lawsuit.
A coalition of law firms representing six of Matthews’ victims filed a lawsuit Tuesday against IAC, Match Group, Hinge, Tinder and Matthews in Denver District Court.
Women reported being assaulted by Matthews to both Match Group and Hinge as early as September 2020, but the man continued to appear on the app using the same photos and identifying profile information for the next three years, according to the lawsuit.
Staying Safe on Dating Apps After Dr. Stephen Matthews Case
At one point, three months after she had reported him, Hinge recommended Matthews’ presumably new profile to one of his previous victims. When she reported him a second time, Hinge again claimed it had “permanently banned” him and had taken “additional steps to ensure that he permanently stays off Hinge.” Those statements were false, the lawsuit claims.
Bans are “fake and ineffective,” and the apps’ infrastructure to report abuse is “defective,” according to the lawsuit. The apps allowed banned users to easily create new accounts using the same information and photos, or reopen their accounts after appealing the ban, the lawsuit alleges.
In his profiles, Matthews continued to use his real name, the same photographs of himself and the same descriptions of his job and place of employment, according to the document. Attorneys also claimed he repeatedly linked the same phone number to his accounts.
The Denver man only stopped using dating apps in 2023 because he was arrested by the Denver Police Department for sexual assault.
“Every detail in this complaint shows a catastrophic failure of basic safety,” Carrie Goldberg, one of the attorneys representing the six victims, said in a statement. “Hinge had explicit notice in 2020 that Matthews drugged and raped a woman he met on the app. Hinge confirmed receipt. Hinge promised it had banned him. Then, Hinge recommended him to more women.”
Alexa said she no longer feels safe using dating apps after she was drugged and assaulted by the Denver man in 2023.
“If Hinge had properly reported him and removed him from all of their platforms, he would have probably done this to a significantly smaller number of women, and he would have never done it to me,” Alexa said. “They were completely liable. Not for his actions, but for giving a platform for his actions.”
In today’s increasingly digital world, people are using dating apps like Hinge and Tinder as their primary source for finding love and connection, Alexa said. The apps need to prioritize user safety over profits, she added.
Alexa said the lawsuit is about “sending a message.”
“This can happen to anyone,” she said. “It has and will continue happening if we don’t take measures like this (lawsuit).”
Match Group’s central database contains records of every user-reported rape and assault across all of its dating apps since 2019, according to The Dating Apps Reporting Project, which was repeatedly referenced in the lawsuit. The 18-month investigation was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network and The Markup, now a part of CalMatters, and copublished with The Guardian and The 19th.
By 2022, hundreds of incidents were being reported each week, according to the project.
“The reality is that if Stephen Matthews were released today, he could get right back on a dating app,” the investigation stated. “Match Group knows this — and now so do you.”
Match Group, Hinge and Tinder did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The group of attorneys pursuing the Denver lawsuit originally considered making the case a class action suit, but said it’s difficult when each victim has personalized injuries, Greg Bentley of Denver-based Dormer Harping said.
“I certainly anticipate that there will be additional lawsuits,” Bentley said. “While it won’t be a class action, I think that this will be more like a mass action. There’ll be a group of individual cases that potentially share the same nucleus, a common set of facts, from what the platforms knew and what they didn’t do.”
Bentley said he wants to ensure anyone affected seeks justice, including survivors who didn’t report their experience or who weren’t discovered in the criminal case. He said the team is working to protect each of the victims’ privacy throughout the case, including by not naming them in the lawsuit.
“Hinge had the chance to stop him,” Alexa said. “Hinge could have protected us. I want this lawsuit to stand for every woman who trusted a dating platform that promised safety and gave her danger instead.”
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