Monroe County lawsuit alleges former Bills LB Cornelius Bennett sexually assaulted teen in 1992

Sep. 3—A lawsuit filed in Monroe County this week accuses a former Buffalo Bills football star of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in a bar near Rochester 28 years ago.

The victim of the alleged attack names Cornelius Bennett as assaulting her at a bar in the Town of Brighton on a summer night in 1992.

According to the lawsuit, the woman was 17 years old and was selling flowers in a bar known as the Otter Lounge when Bennett — then in his late 20s — allegedly assaulted her. Her lawsuit names Bennett, the Bills organization and the National Football League as defendants.

Based on the filing dates listed on court papers, the lawsuit may have been filed 16 days too late to be litigated under the state's Child Victims Act.

Bennett, 56, one of the best defensive players in the team's history, now lives in Florida. The Buffalo News repeatedly called a listed number for Bennett but was unable to reach him for comment on Friday.

Allegations of sexual assault were made against Bennett in another incident in Buffalo in 1997, after he had left the Bills. In that case, a woman claimed that Bennett sexually attacked her in a downtown Buffalo hotel. The football star pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of sexual misconduct.

A Buffalo City Court judge sentenced him to 60 days in jail, a $1,000 fine, a $617.26 hospital bill, and 100 hours of community service. The judge also required Bennett to attend counseling programs for anger management and substance abuse.

The new lawsuit filed in Monroe County alleges that Bennett was at the Town of Brighton bar, a few miles outside Rochester, with about four other Bills' players and some members of the Buffalo Jills cheerleading team. The suit claims that Bennett and other Bills players were wearing "official Buffalo Bills team jerseys and equipment" and that they were attending a team-sponsored event at the nightspot.

The lawsuit alleges that Bennett began to harass the girl verbally in a lounge area, and then physically attacked her after pursuing her into a basement "resting area."

Bennett made extremely crude remarks to the girl while physically violating her and trying to remove her clothing, according to court papers filed by a Garden City attorney, Christopher M. Arzberger.

The lawsuit alleged that the incident has caused the woman severe emotional trauma that continues to this day.

Bennett shoved her into a phone booth and tried to remove her clothing before sexually assaulting her, the lawsuit claims.

According to court papers, Bennett stopped the alleged attack and left the woman after someone else came downstairs to the basement.

Arzberger could not be reached for comment on why the lawsuit was filed so many years after the alleged incident.

According to court papers, the lawsuit, which was first reported Wednesday by the Rochester-based law journal The Daily Record, was filed under the Child Victims Act, and the attorney's documents are dated Aug. 28. The court file indicates that the document was recorded by the Monroe County Clerk on Aug. 30. But the state's deadline for filing CVA lawsuits was Aug. 14.

Bennett was a star linebacker for the University of Alabama football team before playing with the Bills from 1987 to 1995. He played in the NFL's Pro Bowl for five years, and was a stalwart on the four Bills teams that lost Super Bowls. After leaving the Bills, Bennett played for two other NFL teams before he retired in 2000.

"I don't talk about that, because that's a past life, and I'll leave it at that," Bennett told Jay Skurski of The News last year when asked about his criminal conviction. "I can't change that, man. All I can do is be a better human than I was yesterday."

Bennett apologized to the victim in that case when he was sentenced in the 1997 Buffalo case, saying he "didn't intend to put us in the situation that we're in now."

Despite his achievements on the football field, Bennett has never been selected for the Bills Wall of Fame.

In Skurski's story last year, he disclosed that former Bills coach Marv Levy had written a letter to team owner Kim Pegula in 2018, acknowledging that Wall of Fame voters might be reluctant to vote for Bennett given his guilty plea to a sex crime.

"I understand their concern, but I also feel that (Bennett) has already dearly paid the price, and that he has directed an overwhelming amount of attention to atoning for that action," Levy wrote.

The former coach's remarks related to the 1997 incident that led to Bennett's guilty plea.

A Bills' spokesman had no immediate response to questions from The News about the lawsuit.

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