Two women have come forward with sexual assault allegations against Louisville police officer Brett Hankison, one of three white officers accused in the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old unarmed black EMT and aspiring nurse in Louisville, Ky., who was fatally shot March 13 by police while they carried out a search warrant on the wrong apartment.
After Taylor’s shooting, Hankison, who is white, and two other Louisville officers, Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Officer Myles Cosgrove, were placed on administrative leave while the department investigates their actions. None have been criminally charged in connection with Taylor’s shooting.
The sexual assault allegations against Hankison, raised last week by two women on social media and reported by People Magazine, attracted the attention of Louisville Metro Police, which has reached out to the women so the department’s Public Integrity Unit “can initiate and conduct an investigation.”
One of the women, who identified herself on Facebook as Margo Borders, wrote that in April 2018, “a police officer who I had interacted with on many occasions at bars in St. Matthews offered me a ride home. He drove me home in uniform, in his marked car, invited himself into my apartment and sexually assaulted me while I was unconscious.”
“I never reported him out of fear of retaliation,” she writes, before naming Hankison as her alleged assailant. “I had no proof of what happened and he had the upper hand because he was a police officer. Who do you call when the person who assaulted you is a police officer? Who were they going to believe? I knew it wouldn’t be me.”
In the second instance, a woman who identified herself as Emily Terry took to Instagram to write that last fall, “I began walking home from a bar intoxicated. A police officer pulled up next to me and offered me a ride home. I thought to myself, ‘Wow. That is so nice of him.’ And willingly got in.”
She continued: “He began making sexual advances towards me; rubbing my thigh, kissing my forehead, and calling me ‘baby.’ Mortified, I did not move. I continued to talk about my grad school experiences and ignored him. As soon as he pulled up to my apartment building, I got out of the car and ran to the back. My friend reported this the next day, and of course nothing came from it.”
Asked whether any formal complaint alleging sexual harassment or sexual misconduct involving Hankison had been received or previously investigated, the police department spokesperson told People Magazine that they are looking into the current allegations.
