Shannon Sharpe’s ex-girlfriend talks about the alleged rape and harassment campaign that left her “scared for my life” in a new interview

Michele Bundy Evans, the ex-girlfriend of Shannon Sharpe, was visibly shaken in a recent interview as she described being raped in 2010 and receiving threats to “kill” her.

In the midst of a $50 million sexual assault case, many fans and other celebrities, like Stephen A. Smith, have defended Shannon Sharpe; yet, Evans’ 2023 complaint contained similar claims. Evans explained how her professional relationship with Sharpe ended in a vicious sexual assault that would “make it so no other man would want me” in an interview with The Sun. She said that Sharpe had threatened, harassed, and stalked her to keep her silent in addition to her dread of speaking out against a powerful celebrity.

The eight-year relationship between Michele Bundy Evans and Shannon Sharpe began when they met at work.

In 2002, while interviewing the retired NFL player in the locker area, Evans, a sports reporter, encountered him. Despite her desire to keep their relationship exclusively business-related, the then-Broncos player persisted in his “pretty heavy” pursuit of her. 

She added, “I was a reporter and didn’t want to mix the two, so I resisted for a while, but he’s very charming.”

The former sports journalist claims that they maintained their relationship for a number of years. Evans claimed she didn’t anticipate monogamy from one of the biggest football stars and that she kept seeing other people. According to her, Sharpe wanted her all to himself while bringing other live-in girlfriends in and out of his home, which allegedly resulted in an altercation. 

The fact that he had taken one female out of his [Atlanta] home and placed another in it without telling me caused us to argue. Back then, he had requested me to end my relationship with my (future) spouse. At the same time, I was seeing both Shannon and my husband,” she stated.

“Wait a second, you want me to be with you alone, yet you want to relocate someone into your house without telling me. So that’s where [the argument] originated. He lacks faithfulness. Because of this, I refused to be faithful to someone who was unfaithful. For me, at least, it simply doesn’t work that way,” Evans added. 

In a 2023 lawsuit, Evans detailed how the argument escalated to physical and sexual assault.

Evans’ $4 million complaint claims that the dispute became the “biggest argument that we ever got in.” She claimed that Sharpe had become violent with her when she filed the lawsuit with the New York Supreme Court on December 20, 2023.

“He exerted control over others.” He was taking charge. I refused his request for sex as he was manhandling me. “No,” I said to him, “because you gave it to someone else.” He refused to accept “no” as an answer, so I explained why in addition to saying “no,” she told The Sun.

He then overwhelmed me, knocked me to my knees, and put his penis in my mouth. When he was finished, he placed me on the bed. And all of this was difficult, you know. I’d said no, and I still said no. and so it was the most difficult,” she added, crying uncontrollably.

Evans said that Sharpe not only caused her to experience the anguish of the alleged assault, but also intimidated her into remaining silent. She requested a restraining order from him in 2010 after “He started making other threats, threats against my life.” She said in her complaint filed over ten years later that “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.”

Although she stated she never planned to report Sharpe, she said he hounded her about it nonstop. 

“I wasn’t going to do anything, and he was just so afraid it would leak. However, as he continued to phone me at work and behaved in a very hostile manner, I realized that it was not going to stop. He threatened to murder me, destroy me, and tell me he was watching me, among other things,” she continued.

Evans filed for the protective order, alleging forced sex with Sharpe, after she had “had enough.” She pondered whether Sharpe was connected to incidents where her address was leaked or when she was verbally attacked by a stranger outside her apartment. Those instances, she claimed, terrified her into removing the restraining order.

She was “not thinking straight” about calling the police once she entered the “trauma mindset,” Evans claimed. Because of Atlanta’s widespread “problem with corruption,” she said, she was “too scared.” Evans continued by saying she expected Sharpe’s group to write her off as “crazy.”

First of all, I’m not someone who is skulking out of the woods to discuss my relationship with him, as he implied in his comment, so it’s definitely not weird to have him portray me in that manner. I have been out. After Sharpe’s legal team refuted all of the accusations made against him, she responded, “I’ve been suing him.”

Accused were dismissed by Shannon Sharpe’s legal team as “obsessed.”

In a statement released last week, lawyer Mitchell Schuster said that Evans is “obsessed” with Sharpe and has “fabricated a narrative.” 

When a well-known person makes headlines, it should come as no surprise that a variety of people come out of nowhere to disclose their connections with them in an effort to make money off of the purported relationship.

Frequently, those allegations or reports are either outdated rumors, fantastical exaggerations, or perhaps outright false statements. This is clearly intentional, intended to fabricate a story. He wrote, “This is exactly what is happening to Shannon Sharpe, and the resuscitation of the Michele Evans case is a perfect example.”

It went on to say:

Unfortunately, Ms. Evans decided to fabricate a claim against Shannon since she had become fixated on him. She launched an entirely baseless civil complaint on her own after failing to find a lawyer to pursue her ludicrous claim.

“The fact is that Shannon hasn’t spoken to this individual in a long time, and from what we understand, she is still on probation after serving three years in prison for attempting to kill her husband in order to possibly pursue a relationship with Shannon.”

Accusations that Evans tried to kill her husband repeatedly led to her filing a defamation case in 2023. Additionally, Sharpe was accused in the complaint of continually damaging her reputation by talking about her on television and other public forums.