SHANNON Sharpe’s ex has claimed she was scared for her life after the former NFL star allegedly raped her and then threatened her when she filed a restraining order against him.
In an exclusive sit-down with The U.S. Sun, one of Sharpe’s accusers, Michele Bundy Evans, 53, recounts the allegations she made in a bombshell sexual assault lawsuit.
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WARNING: The graphic details below about an alleged sexual assault may be disturbing to some readers.
Evans said that she dated the Denver Broncos star turned sportscaster for nearly a decade after she met him while working as a local TV sports reporter in 2002.
“We met in the press room at the Broncos, in April of 2002, but we didn’t start dating until we met at the club Blue 67 in Denver,” she told The U.S. Sun in an interview filmed in her New York City apartment earlier this week.
“He started pursuing me pretty heavily,” she said of their second meeting in the Fall of that year.
“I resisted for a while because I was a reporter and I didn’t want to mix the two, but he’s very charming.”
Evans claimed she and the First Take star were together a number of years, and they had a relatively open relationship that wasn’t without its bumps in the road, but everything came to a crashing halt in 2010.
Evans, who was married at that point and living in Atlanta near the NFL star, said that Sharpe was pressuring her to leave her husband, but, she claimed, the football star wasn’t being faithful himself.
“We had an argument about the fact that he had removed one girl from his [Atlanta] house and put another girl in his house and he didn’t tell me,” she said.
“He had asked me to break up with my husband at the time. I was dating Shannon and my husband at the same time.”
“It’s like wait a minute, you want me to be with just you, but you want to move somebody into your house and not even tell me. So that’s what [the argument] stemmed from.
“He’s not a faithful person. So I wasn’t going to be faithful to a non-faithful person. It just doesn’t work that way, not for me, anyway,” she continued.
ALLEGATIONS OF RAPE
As Evans claimed in a lawsuit she filed on December 20, 2023, in the New York Supreme Court, their fight was explosive, with the former local sports reporter describing it as the “biggest argument that we ever got in.”
The ESPN star has denied all the claims.
“He was controlling. He was domineering. He was manhandling me, and he wanted to have sex, and I told him no,” Evans said.
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“I told him ‘No, because you gave it to somebody else.’ I didn’t only tell him ‘No,’ I told him why, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“So he overpowered me, put me to my knees, put his penis in my mouth, and after he got enough of that, he put me on the bed. And you know, this was all a struggle.
“I had said no, and I said no… and so it was the hardest. Yeah, this is too hard,” she continued, visibly shaking and upset as she recalled the alleged incident.
Evans said she didn’t plan to go to the authorities or report the incident to the police, but, as she claimed in her 2023 lawsuit, Sharpe threatened her to keep her quiet.
“He started coming at me [saying] if I tell anybody you know, he’ll use everybody he knows to destroy me, which he basically has,” she claimed.
Evans then repeated claims she also made in her restraining order application from 2010: “He started making other threats, threats against my life.
“He just was so worried that it would get out, and I wasn’t going to do anything.
“But when he kept calling me at work, and when he kept very aggressively behaving, and I could see it wasn’t going to go away, and he said he was going to destroy me, and he was going to kill me, and he told me he was watching me and all that.”
In her 2010 restraining order, Evans had made the same claims and alleged Sharpe “forced [her] to have sex with him; he repeatedly calls and threatens her life; [Sharpe] places [Evans] under surveillance and calls to say he is watching.”
RESTRAINING ORDER
“I went and got a protective order. I’d had enough,” she admitted.
Evans said that she would soon feel even more threatened than she was before she got the order, however.
She believed that Sharpe doxxed her (publically releasing someone’s private information with intent to harrass or intimidate them) because her address got out, something she also alleged in her 2023 lawsuit.
“I had somebody stop by my apartment, which had a door that led right to it, it was basically on the sidewalk, and somebody came up to my door and said, ‘Shut up f****** b****,’ screaming it at the top of their lungs and I had my daughter right there, and I was like, Oh no, no, no, no, no,” she told The U.S. Sun.
She also claimed she believed there was someone lurking at her home and parked in front of her driveway when her daughter was home alone at around the same time.
Evans admitted she did not know if these incidents were connected at all to Sharpe.
The former sports reporter said after those incidents, she decided to drop the restraining order.
The 53-year-old opened up about why she didn’t file a report with the police after the alleged rape claiming she was “scared for my life.”
She also feared police corruption at the time.
“Atlanta had a problem with corruption down there, and I was too scared to go to the police.” Evans said.
She continued: “When this happens, you’re in a trauma mindset, you’re not [thinking] okay, well, maybe I should do that.
“No, you fear for your life, you’re traumatized, you’re not thinking straight.
“You’re having anxiety and panic attacks, and I was worried that he would get a hold of this police officer and who knows what would happen.
“And so it was just a decision, and it’s a decision a lot of rape victims make to not go to the police.”
She added that she expected to be painted by Sharpe’s team as some unstable person.
“They always say the woman is crazy. You know, hey, I might be at this point, after everything I’ve dealt with,” she hit out.
“But back then, no, no, definitely not crazy, and to see him paint me the way that he did, first off, I’m not somebody crawling out of the woodwork to talk about my connection with him like he insinuated in his statement. I’ve been out. I’ve been suing him.”
When asked for comment for this story, Sharpe’s team referenced a statement his attorney, Mitchell Schuster, released last week.
“It should be of no surprise that when someone famous is in the news, all sorts of people crawl out of the woodwork to share their connection to that person in an attempt to profit from that alleged relationship,” it read.
“In many cases those stories or accusations are nothing more than old news, fanciful exaggerations, or sometimes blatant misrepresentations of fact.”
The statement continued: “This is obviously purposeful, designed to create a fabricated narrative.
“This is exactly what is happening to Shannon Sharpe and the resurrection of the case involving Michele Evans is a perfect example.
“Sadly, Ms. Evans became obsessed with Shannon and decided to manufacture a claim against him. When she could not find a lawyer to pursue her outrageous story, she filed a civil complaint on her own that is completely devoid of merit.
“The fact is that Shannon has had no contact with this person for many years and it is our understanding that she is still on probation after serving 3 years in prison for trying to kill her husband so that she could hopefully pursue a relationship with Shannon.”
SHARPE’S LAWSUITS
In her 2023 lawsuit, in which Evans sued Sharpe for defamation, she claimed Sharpe has publicly falsely alleged that she tried to kill her husband.
In the suit, Evans also claimed that the sports personality has repeatedly referenced their legal disputes on television and other public platforms, which she says has caused significant harm to her reputation.
Meanwhile, the embattled sportscaster is also facing a $50 million lawsuit filed by a woman identified as Jane Doe, who alleges that he raped her when she attempted to end their relationship in 2024.
According to the lawsuit, filed in Nevada and obtained by The U.S. Sun, Doe claimed that Sharpe persistently called and texted her, demanding that she visit his Beverly Glen mansion.
Doe stated that the two eventually entered into a consensual relationship but alleged she endured “controlling and verbal abuse” during their time together.
“He demanded complete control over her time and body, expecting her to be at his house on his schedule, at his command, whenever he called,” attorney Tony Buzbee wrote in the lawsuit.
Buzbee, a prominent Texas-based attorney, is widely known for representing more than 20 plaintiffs who accused NFL quarterback Deshaun Watson of sexual assault in 2021.
Sharpe has strongly denied Doe’s allegations, with his legal team labeling the lawsuit “an egregious attempt at blackmail.”
He stepped away from his role at ESPN last week, stating that he plans to return at the start of the NFL preseason.
SHARPE’S BATTERY ARRESTS
As The U.S. Sun exclusively revealed earlier this week, Sharpe was arrested at least twice for domestic battery, once in 1995 and again in 2004.
In one incident, Sharpe, 56, got into an altercation with a woman at his Atlanta home in January 1995.
A police spokesperson said at the time: “Each said they were hit by the other.”
Then, less than a decade later, the famed sportscaster found himself facing similar charges with another woman inside his Atlanta home.
A Fulton County Clerk confirmed to The U.S. Sun that Sharpe was charged with simple battery on July 22, 2004, in that incident.
The woman claimed Sharpe lifted her up to physically remove her from his home.
That case was eventually settled in mediation.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
Michele Bundy Evans’ Arrest & Incarceration
Michele Bundy Evans opened up about her arrest and incarceration after a domestic violence incident with her husband.
In her defamation lawsuit against Shannon Sharpe, Michele Bundy Evans detailed her arrest and subsequent incarceration for a domestic incident involving her husband, whom she claimed was abusive.
In her interview with The U.S. Sun, Evans gave her version of the events.
She said she and her husband were in an altercation in which he was on the hood of a car and that she was behind the wheel and she drove the car and hit another vehicle.
She admitted her husband was hurt in the incident, but she insisted she did not try to kill him.
Evans was convicted on 1st-degree assault, which is a Class B felony after the incident.
Michele served a year and a half at Rikers Correctional Facility in New York City, before being transferred to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility where she served a year and a half.
As part of her suit against Sharpe she alleged he had publicly falsely claimed she tried to kill her husband.
Sharpe’s legal team has said in a statement: “The fact is that Shannon has had no contact with this person for many years and it is our understanding that she is still on probation after serving 3 years in prison for trying to kill her husband so that she could hopefully pursue a relationship with Shannon.”
Evans added in a statement to The U.S. Sun: “I did not try to kill my husband, let alone for Shannon. I was neither indicted nor went to prison for attempted murder. I took a plea for assault because I was in an impossible situation.
“Not only was his statement malicious and egregious towards me, but also disrespectful towards my husband, making him and everyone else think his wife was going to leave/hurt him for another man,” the statement concluded.
Evans said she has since donated her time to be an advocate for conditions at Rikers, including taking part in the Rikers Public Memory Project and donating sculptures to the cause.
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