TW: sexual assault
After worldwide outrage over the unjust shooting of Breonna Taylor in March sparked further investigation into the event, involved officer Brett Hankison was fired from the department for lack of attention to protocol. He was later indicted for three instances of first-degree wanton endangerment, ABC News reported, after allegedly blindly firing ten gunshots into Taylor’s apartment, resulting in her unfortunate and untimely death.
Hankison pled not guilty to these charges, and with the passage of time, his case has recently faded into the background of the mainstream media and has not been garnering nearly as much attention as it did over the several months following the case.
However, Hankison’s fate has yet to be decided, especially with recent charges of sexual assault raised against him over an incident from 2018, according to NBC News.
Margo Borders and nine other women have publicly accused Hankison of sexual assault, according to USA Today. Borders filed a lawsuit against Hankison for “willfully, intentionally, painfully and violently” assaulting her while she was unconscious, and asserted that Hankison had afterward attempted to “suggest that the two had engaged in consensual relations.”
The case alleges that Borders was left in “tremendous physical pain.” It also suggested a pattern of Hankison using “police uniform and secondary nightclub employment as mechanisms to prey on innocent women,” according to NBC.
“This police department’s long-standing tolerance for sexual assault is disgusting,” said Borders’ attorney Sam Aguiar, who also represents Breonna Taylor’s family, in a statement on Tuesday according to NBC. “We intend to hold all who failed to ever report or investigate Brett Hankison responsible. Too many women in this community have suffered for too long.”
