Lawsuit: Uber Exec Asked Nanny For "Handwork," Paraded Naked Around the House 

Cameron Poetzscher is Uber’s head of corporate development. And, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in San Francisco Superior Court, he repeatedly sexually harassed his live-in nanny by masturbating, exposing himself, and asking for “handwork.”

The suit, by former domestic worker Julieta Yang, names both Poetzscher and his wife, fellow Silicon Valley exec Varsha Rao, who works as Airbnb’s head of global operations. According to the suit, the techie power couple from such typically uncontroversial companies tormented Yang while the family was located in Singapore, and then San Francisco, where Poetzscher harassed her and Rao just let it happen. Yang says Poetzscher’s conduct included “nudity, comments of a sexual nature, unwanted sexual advances, and unwanted touching.”

Highlights include:

Watching her cook while standing there naked:

Asking to be rubbed with lotion:

Asking for food and then jerking off when it arrived:

Asking for “handwork” and bonus money “massage”:

Fondling her:

The plaintiff claims that after complaining to Poetzscher’s wife, she asked him to stop, though he continued “walking around naked and making sexual comments.” This was only what happened in Singapore.

After the family relocated to the Bay Area, Yang says Poetzscher’s behavior remained unsettling and crude, to say the extremely very least:

The suit claims Poetzscher persisted in tricking Yang into watching him naked, conspicuously jerking off, asking for weird massages, and generally acting like not an upstanding employer around the house. With no sign that Poetzscher was going to stop or that Rao was going to stop him (and with no friends or family to turn to for aid), Yang says she put in her two weeks notice. She’s suing the couple for damages and lost wages.

SF Weekly made the interesting observation that In 2014, Varsha Rao was profiled in Marie Claire and spoke about her time in Singapore as ‘a really nice family adventure.’”

You can read the complaint in full below. A spokesperson for Poetzscher provided the following statement denying any wrongdoing:

“We are both deeply shocked and saddened by these allegations—which are completely and utterly false. Julieta worked as our nanny for seven years and was an important part of our family, someone both our children loved deeply. Julieta left in April, and we have not heard from her since then. We will make no further comment about this case.”

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Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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