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.”

By The Associated Press

Starting Tuesday, the U.S. Capitol will display a statue of a teenaged Barbara Rose Johns as she protested poor conditions at her segregated Virginia high school, a pointed replacement for a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that was removed several years ago.

The unveiling ceremony of the statue representing Virginia in the Capitol will take place in Emancipation Hall, featuring Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Virginia’s congressional delegation.

Johns was 16 years old in 1951 when she led a student strike for equal education at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. The students’ cause gained the support of NAACP lawyers, who filed a lawsuit that would become one of the five cases that the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed in Brown v. Board of Education. The high court’s landmark 1954 decision declared “separate but equal” public schools unconstitutional.

Johns later married the Rev. William Powell and became Barbara Rose Johns Powell, raised five children and was a librarian in the Philadelphia Public Schools. She died at 56 in 1991.

A model of the statue showed the young Johns standing to the side of a lectern, holding a tattered book over her head. Its pedestal is engraved with the words, “Are we going to just accept these conditions, or are we going to do something about it?” It also features a quote from the Book of Isaiah, “And a little child shall lead them.”

In a statement Monday, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said the Bible verse reminds him of Johns’ bravery and leadership.

“I’m thrilled that millions of visitors to the U.S. Capitol, including many young people, will now walk by her statue and learn about her story,” Kaine said. “May she continue to inspire generations to stand up for equality and justice.”

The statue replaces one of Lee that was removed in December 2020 from the Capitol, where it had represented Virginia for 111 years. The removal occurred during a time of renewed national attention over Confederate monuments after the death of George Floyd and was relocated to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

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The Johns piece is part of the National Statuary Hall Collection at the Capitol, in which each state can contribute two statues. The other statue representing Virginia is of George Washington.

National Statuary Hall displays 35 of the statues. Others are in the Crypt, the Hall of Columns and the Capitol Visitor Center.

Former Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam had requested the removal of the Lee statue. In December 2020, a state commission recommended replacing Lee’s statue with a statue of Johns.

The Johns statue, sculpted by Steven Weitzman of Maryland, received final approval from the Architect of the Capitol and the Joint Committee on the Library in July.

Johns is also featured in a sculpture at the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial outside the state Capitol in Richmond.

By STAN CHOE

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is drifting lower on Tuesday following mixed data on the economy’s strength, which did little to clear uncertainty about where interest rates may be heading.

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The S&P 500 slipped 0.4% in midday trading and remains a bit below its all-time high set last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 220 points, or 0.5%, as of 11:50 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower.

Treasury yields eased a bit, following a larger initial drop, after one report said the U.S. unemployment rate was at its worst level last month since 2021, but employers also added more jobs than economists expected. A separate report, meanwhile, said an underlying measure of strength for revenue at U.S. retailers grew more in October than economists expected.

The mixed data initially sent Treasury yields lower in the bond market. The knee-jerk reaction seemed to be that the reports could encourage the Federal Reserve to see the slowing job market as the biggest threat to the economy, rather than high inflation, and cut interest rates further in 2026. But yields quickly recovered and then drifted up and down.

What the Fed does with interest rates is a top driver for Wall Street because lower rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, even if they also may worsen inflation. A report coming on Thursday will show how bad inflation was last month, and economists expect it to show prices for U.S. consumers continue to rise faster than anyone would like.

A report released on Tuesday after U.S. stocks began trading suggested price pressures are rising sharply, with average selling prices for businesses climbing at one of the fastest rates since the middle of 2022. The preliminary data from S&P Global also said growth for overall business activity slowed to its weakest level since June.

“Higher prices are again being widely blamed on tariffs, with an initial impact on manufacturing now increasingly spilling over to services to broaden the affordability problem,” according to Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.15% from 4.18% late Monday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, eased to 3.48% from 3.51%.

Helping to keep the overall market in check were continued swings for stocks that have been caught up in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology.

Oracle rose 1.5%, and Broadcom added 0.1%. They both had dropped to sharp losses last week, even though both reported stronger profits for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

But CoreWeave, which rents out access to top-of-the-line AI chips, fell 3.4%.

Questions remain about whether all the spending underway on AI technology will produce the kind of profits and productivity that will make it worth the expense.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Pfizer fell 4.4% after giving a forecast for profit in 2026 that was below what some analysts expected. Its forecast for revenue next year, of between $59.5 billion and $62.5 billion, was close to analysts’ expectations.

Kraft Heinz rose 0.7% after saying Steve Cahillane, who was most recently CEO of Kellanova, will join as CEO on Jan. 1. After Kraft Heinz splits into two companies, which is expected to happen in the second half of 2026, Cahillane will lead the one that will hold onto the Heinz, Philadelphia and Kraft Mac & Cheese brands.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell across much of Europe and Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 1.6% ahead of an expected hike to interest rates by the Bank of Japan later this week.

Other markets in Asia also had some of the world’s sharper swings. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 2.2%, while indexes fell 1.5% in Hong Kong and 1.1% in Shanghai.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

By STEPHEN GROVES, LISA MASCARO and BEN FINLEY

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that the Pentagon will not publicly release unedited video of a strike that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a boat allegedly carrying cocaine in the Caribbean.

Hegseth said that members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee would have an opportunity this week to review the video, but did not say whether all members of Congress would be allowed to see it, even as a defense policy bill demands that it be released to Congress.

“Of course we’re not going to release a top secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public,” Hegseth told reporters as he exited a closed-door briefing with senators.

President Donald Trump’s top Cabinet officials overseeing national security were on Capitol Hill Tuesday to defend the swift escalation of U.S. military force and deadly boat strikes in international waters near Venezuela, but it left lawmakers questioning the broader goals of the campaign.

Hegseth, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others, briefed the House and the Senate amid congressional investigations into the military strike in September that killed two survivors. Overall, they defended the campaign as a success that had prevented drugs from reaching American shores.

Rubio told reporters the campaign is a “counter drug mission” that is “focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that are are operating in our hemisphere , undermining the security of Americans, killing Americans, poisoning Americans.”

But, lawmakers have been focusing on the Sept. 2 attack on two survivors as they sift through the rationale for the broader U.S. military buildup in the region that increasingly appears pointed at Venezuela. On the eve of the briefings, the U.S. military said late Monday it attacked three more boats believed to have been smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing eight people.

Senators on both sides of the aisle said the officials left them in the dark about Trump’s goals when it comes to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro or committing U.S. forces directly to the South American nation.

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The closed-door sessions come as the U.S. is building up warships, flying fighter jets near Venezuelan airspace and seizing an oil tanker as part of its campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who has insisted the real purpose of the U.S. military operations is to force him from office. Trump’s Republican administration has not sought any authorization from Congress for action against Venezuela. But lawmakers objecting to the military incursions are pushing war powers resolutions toward potential voting this week.

It’s all raising sharp questions that Hegseth and the others will be pressed to answer. The administration’s go-it-alone approach without Congress, experts say, has led to problematic military actions, none more so than the strike that killed two people who had climbed on top of part of a boat that had been partially destroyed in an initial attack.

“If it’s not a war against Venezuela, then we’re using armed force against civilians who are just committing crimes,” said John Yoo, a Berkeley Law professor who helped craft the President George W. Bush administration’s legal arguments and justification for aggressive interrogation after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “Then this question, this worry, becomes really pronounced. You know, you’re shooting civilians. There’s no military purpose for it.”

Yet for the first several months, Congress has received little more than a trickle of information about why or how the U.S. military was conducting a campaign that has destroyed more than 20 boats and killed at least 95 people. At times, lawmakers have learned of strikes from social media after the Pentagon posted videos of boats bursting into flames.

Congress is now demanding — including with language included in an annual military policy bill — that the Pentagon release video of that initial operation to lawmakers.

The demand for release of video footage

For some, the footage has become a case sample that demonstrates the flawed rationale behind the entire campaign.

“The American public ought to see it. I think shooting unarmed people floundering in the water, clinging to wreckage, is not who we are as a people,” said Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has been an outspoken critic of the campaign. He added that, ”You can’t say you’re at war and say, ‘We’re not going to give any kind of due process to anybody and blow up people without any kind of proof.’”

Hegseth told lawmakers last week that he was still deciding whether to release the footage.

Still, there are also many prominent Republicans who back the campaign. Sen. Jim Risch, the GOP chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, last week called the attacks “absolutely, totally, and 100% legal under U.S. law and international law” and claimed that many American lives had been saved by making sure the drugs didn’t reach the U.S.

But as lawmakers have dug into the details of the Sept. 2 strike, inconsistencies have emerged in the Trump administration’s explanation of the attack, which the Pentagon initially tried to dismiss as a “completely false” narrative.

The shifting rationale for the strike

Trump has argued that the strike that killed survivors was justified because the people were trying to overturn the boat. Several GOP lawmakers have also put forward that argument, saying that it showed the two survivors were trying to stay in the fight, rather than surrender.

However, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley, who ordered the second strike as he commanded the special forces soldiers conducting it, acknowledged in private briefings on Capitol Hill last week that although the two people had tried to overturn the boat, they were unlikely to succeed. That’s according to several people who either were in the briefings or had knowledge of them and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them.

The two people had climbed on top of the overturned boat, had not made any radio or cellphone calls for backup and were waving, Bradley told the lawmakers. The Navy admiral consulted with a military attorney, then ordered the second strike because it was believed that drugs were in the hull of the boat and the mission was to make sure they were destroyed.

Were the survivors ‘shipwrecked’?

Experts say the strike seems to run counter to the Pentagon’s own manual on the laws of war, which states that “orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

“The boat was damaged, the boat was overturned, and the boat had no power,” said Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the U.S. Naval War College. “I really don’t care if there was another boat coming to rescue them. They’re shipwrecked.”

The argument at the heart of Trump’s campaign — that drugs bound for the U.S. are the equivalent of an attack on American lives — has resulted in lawmakers trying to parse whether laws were violated and, more broadly, what Trump’s goals are with Venezuela.

Besides the briefings from Hegseth and Rubio on Tuesday, Bradley is also expected to appear for classified briefings with the Senate and House Armed Services Committees on Wednesday.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said he wants to “really understand what action, what intelligence they were acting on and whether or not they follow the laws of war, the laws of the sea.”