Buffalo Bills first-round pick Maxwell Hairston is accused of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit filed on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
The alleged incident occurred in 2021, while Hairston was a freshman at the University of Kentucky. The lawsuit details an encounter with a woman who shared an on-campus residence hall at the university.
Hairston allegedly entered her dorm room without permission and followed the woman into her bedroom. He then allegedly ignored repeated refusals to engage in sexual contact before removing her clothes and sexually assaulting her.
Hairston was never criminally charged.
The Bills were aware of a Title IX investigation into the incident, according to general manager Brandon Beane. After the Bills drafted Hairston in the first round of April’s draft, Beane said the Bills did their own investigation.
“He’s an impeccable kid, and we did a lot of research,” Beane said. “Yeah, I think all teams were aware of the Title IX thing. That was fully investigated by the school. He even volunteered to do a polygraph and had notes. It was one of those where there was zero information saying that this actually happened to what the accusation was. And just like anything in this world, you can’t just take someone’s accounts and think that’s the truth.”
Beane added that if there were any merit to the accusation, Hairston wouldn’t have been invited to the NFL Combine.
“Every person you talk to at Kentucky, teammates, staff there, plus what we’ve done, I would say this is a heck of a young man, every person you ask,” Beane said. “So that’s unfortunate when things like that are attached to someone’s name. And in this case, doesn’t seem to be anything there.”
The woman reported the incident to law enforcement immediately after it happened, her attorney said. Following the investigation, she transferred schools and is now suing Hairston for compensatory and punitive damages for the harm she endured.
Attorney Peter Flowers is representing the woman in the lawsuit.
“Our client showed remarkable strength in coming forward, and we are proud to stand with her in pursuit of accountability and justice,” Meyers said in a press release. “No one — regardless of their status or athletic success — is above the law.”
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