The former Louisville Metro Police detective who was fired and then indicted by a grand jury on charges related to the police shooting of Breonna Taylor has been sued by a woman who called him a “sexual predator” and accused him of sexually assaulting her in 2018.
“Brett Hankison is a 44-year-old sexual predator,” the lawsuit alleges. “For years, he has used his police uniform and secondary night club employment as mechanisms to prey on innocent women who are two decades younger than him.”
The lawsuit, filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court on Tuesday, said that Hankison “used his badge and uniform to cultivate a friendship” with 22-year-old law school student Margo Borders before he allegedly assaulted her, “leaving her physically injured and mentally battered,” according to ABC News. Hankison moonlighted as a security guard for bars in the Louisville metro area, including the Tin Roof bar, which the lawsuit named as the bar where Hankison offered to give Borders a ride home in April 2018.
“Margo left Hankison on the couch and went to her room to change. She’d had plenty to drink and went to sleep rather than returning to the living room,” the lawsuit said. “While Margo was unconscious, Hankison went into her room, stripped off his clothes and willfully, intentionally, painfully, and violently sexually assaulted Margo.” According to the suit, Borders did not consent to have sex with Hankison and yelled at Hankison to get off her when she regained consciousness.
Hankinson’s lawyer, Stew Matthews, told the Washington Examiner he had no information to share on the matter.
Borders first made public claims against Hankison in a Facebook post in June. She said that she had interacted with Hankison “on many occasions at bars in St. Matthews.”
“He drove me home in uniform, in his marked car, invited himself into my apartment and sexually assaulted me while I was unconscious,” Borders wrote. “It took me months to process what had happened and to realize that it wasn’t my fault and I didn’t ask for that to happen by allowing him to give me a ride home. I never reported him out of fear of retaliation. I had no proof of what happened and he had the upper hand because he was a police officer.”
Borders’s lawsuit also claims that multiple women have filed complaints against Hankison in the past, accusing him of making unwanted advances toward them. It says that his supervisors never disciplined Hankison as a result of those complaints.
Lonita Baker, one of Borders’s lawyers, told ABC News that Margo “felt that it was necessary to come forward and pursue justice, and hold Brett accountable. … He used his uniform and badge to target unsuspecting women whom he knew were in a possible state where they could not consent and took advantage of them. It’s disgusting.”
Hankison was indicted in September by a 12-member grand jury and charged with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment. The charges allege that he put Taylor’s neighbors in danger during the raid on her home after bullets that he “wantonly and blindly” fired, according to Louisville Police Chief Robert Schroeder, went into a neighboring apartment. None of the officers involved in the incident were charged with crimes directly related to Taylor’s death.
Hankison pleaded not guilty. He is currently out on $15,000 bail with the condition that he is not allowed to be in possession of a firearm ahead of his trial. If convicted of the charges, Hankison faces up to five years in prison for each of the three counts.
