Shannon Sharpe is facing a $50 million lawsuit from a woman who accuses the NFL Hall of Famer and ESPN analyst of brutally sexually assaulting her multiple times between the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025.
The lawsuit was filed in Nevada Sunday by a Jane Doe who claims she met Sharpe at a Los Angeles gym in 2023 and eventually had a relationship with him over a couple of years she described as “abusive.”
The victim said in her lawsuit that she was 20 when she first met the now-56-year-old. During that first meeting, Sharpe allegedly promised to “buy her fake tits” if she won a weight-loss competition with him, according to TMZ.
The woman said that Sharpe then started to vigorously pursue her by calling and texting in hopes of getting her to visit his mansion.
Eventually, the two started a consensual relationship, though the victim’s suit alleges that Sharpe “demanded complete control over her time and body, expecting her to be at his house on his schedule, at his command, whenever he called,” per People.
The woman said she was terrified on one occasion when Sharpe yelled at her while there was a firearm in the same room.
“Plaintiff tried sharing her location with friends from her iPhone ― just in case,” according to court docs obtained by People. “But Sharpe saw her doing this. The moment he realized what she was doing, he grabbed her by the neck and told her, ‘If you ever do that again, I will fucking kill you.’”
Sharpe denied the allegations in a statement posted to social media credited to his lawyer, Lanny J. Davis.
Davis called the suit “a blatant and cynical attempt to shake down” Sharpe, and said that it is “filled with lies, distortions, and misrepresentations.”
HuffPost reached to Sharpe’s reps for further comment, but no one immediately responded.
The lawsuit also mentions last September’s incident where Sharpe accidentally activated Instagram Live while having sex with a different woman.
The victim said in her suit that she was so “humiliated” by Sharpe’s live sex show that she started to “pull away” from him, leading him to flood her phone with calls.
A month after that incident, Sharpe allegedly forced the woman into a car and drove her to her home, where he forced her to give him oral sex before anally raping her.
“Sharpe grabbed her head, forcing her to look at him as she sobbed,” according to the lawsuit. “He said at that point: ‘Look at this. Look at my arm. I’ve got chills. That’s how good this is.’”
The victim also accuses Sharpe of sexually assaulting her without a condom when he visited her apartment this past January.
