> How are we supposed to assess the validity of this woman's claims?

One source of information is data available about her past behavior, or reputation, or etc - unbalanced people hardly ever go off the deep end in the blink of an eye or out of the blue (unless they have abrain tumor or something like that, but that situation is rare compared to the majority of cases). As an example, let me explain my story: I got hired to build a website, somehow I turned into quasi-employee #1 / acting CTO. The main reason I was the ONLY employee for this B2B startup for 4 years was that the founders have anti-social personality disorders (the CEO is a full blown sociopath, which I can prove in court as I have the evidence) - the other founder merely has a criminal record for fraud. The wife of the CEO turned out to be a psychotically manipulative bitch...

But I didn't know any of this when the whole company got started and the CEO was an acquaintance of someone I've worked with for over a decade. I made some mistakes, and got sucked up into the work - I finally realized the full nature of the situation when the CEO was caught blatantly lying to customers in order to make the sale (and expecting the customers to have zero recourse when they figured it out... dumbass) - the entire company was nothing but a hobby for a rich man and they were out to exploit everyone they could.

Anyway the point is, my friend FINALLY admitted he knew there was something wrong with this guy and told me stories about his behavior when they worked together. From the stories, it was crystal clear this guy had significant psychological issues aka no ethics and everything fell into place with me realizing he truly is a sociopath. This was 30 YEARS ago... and other data I'd gotten from the CEO about his other business and the shady shit he'd pulled then... If my friend had just told me all this data at the beginning (he didn't want to "spread gossip" even though he knew it was true) I would have never taken the job.

The record of people's behavior doesn't get lost in some black hole. That is one of the purposes of gossip within a community - to spread info that can't be disseminated normally due to social constraints or niceties. I am reminded now as well of that 'developer evangelist' who flipped out at some conference claiming that people behind her were being sexist even though the joke they told amongst themselves wasn't about here and she wasn't even part of the group. She had a history of being a nutcase (aka 'sensitive') as well, so given that, her complaints about sexism were quite unfounded.

But does the woman in this situation have such a history? I don't know. I don't think so otherwise it'd be in this thread. And given my experience with lunatics, her story seems quite plausible - and that fact she tried to leave it all behind by moving on says a lot - if she was the out of control one, she, logically, would have an general attitude of 'entitlement' and entitled people always like to create drama because that is one way to gain and keep control. So her side is far more plausible and internally and externally consistent than anything I think the other side (GitHub) is going to be able to produce.

I would myself be shouting from the rooftops about this sociopath and how this company is a threat to their customers and employees, but I can't figure out how to break the NDA. There is no contract anymore as they deliberately breached that... I realized I was dealing with experienced criminals who have been twisting the law to their advantage for their entire business life... so they undoubtedly will sue me into oblivion given a chance. That is how fundamentally evil they are. So I stay quiet and brood.

But this woman has no constraints like that and I support her fully because shit like this needs to exposed for the good of all - people like this founder's wife who are not stopped only gain more and more experience in being manipulative and entitled and 30 years from now, she will be even more evil. If anyone who dealt with the people I did before me had made an effort to stop them in some way, then I (and everyone after me) wouldn't have had to suffer at their hands. Again, if I had the money for lawyers, I'd risk it, but given the nervous breakdown I had because of these people, I'm not up for it - YET. When the NDA expires, I will be spreading their name across the entire Internet.