Former Buffalo Bills football player Cornelius Bennett has been accused of sexually assaulting a teen in a Brighton bar nearly three decades ago.

The linebacker, an Alabama native, played for the Buffalo Bills from 1987 to 1995. He later played for the Atlanta Falcons and the Indianapolis Colts before retiring in 2000.

The alleged incident involving Bennett, who is now 56 and lives in Florida, occurred at the Otter Lodge in Brighton in the summer of 1992, according to a lawsuit filed Monday with the Monroe County Clerk’s office.

The Otter Lodge’s owner Darren Cummings said that his bar opened in 1996 at 1776 Monroe Ave., several years before the alleged occurred at a bar at the same site operating by another name. The Otter Lodge closed in 2019, and a British pub, The Sheffield, opened in its place last year.

A woman this week filed a lawsuit against Bennett, the National Football League and Buffalo Bills, alleging that Bennett repeatedly and violently sexually assaulted her when she was 17 years old.

According to the lawsuit, the then teenager was selling flowers in the bar when some professional football players for the Buffalo Bills and several team cheerleaders, known as the Buffalo Jills, visited the pub at the Monroe Avenue bar.

While there, it is alleged that Bennett sexually harassed the teen in the bar and followed her to the basement where he pushed her into a phone booth, tried to undress her and sexually attacked her despite her repeatedly telling him to stop.

The lawsuit alleges that Bennett “acted with extreme and outrageous conduct that would shock the conscience of a reasonable person … This conduct was atrocious and transcended all bounds of decency, such that this conduct would be utterly intolerable in a civilized society.”

In turn, the woman said she has suffered permanent emotional trauma as a result of the encounter. According to the lawsuit, the woman accused the NFL and the Buffalo Bills of failing to properly supervise Bennett while he interacted with patrons at the bar.

She claimed that they knew, or should have known, about the attack and other misconduct and failed to take any sort of action.

The woman is seeking compensatory and punitive damages against Bennett, the NFL and Buffalo Bills.

This is not the first time Bennett was linked to a sexual assault. In 1997, he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Buffalo. He later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of sexual misconduct.

Bennett, who had already left the Bills when the assault occurred, was not suspended or fined by the NFL after his guilty plea.

The victim filed a lawsuit against Bennett in 1998, which was settled in 2003 for an undisclosed amount.

Cornelius Bennett’s football career

An All-American football player for the University of Alabama in the mid-80s, Bennett came to the Bills midway through the 1987 season in one of the most famous trades in franchise history.

That year he had been selected No. 2 overall in the draft by the Indianapolis Colts, but he refused to sign with the team and held out. The Bills were just beginning to put together the team that would eventually go to four consecutive Super Bowls in the 1990s, and it needed a pass rushing outside linebacker.

And so on Halloween night, Bills general manager Bill Polian spearheaded a massive three-team trade between the Bills, Colts and the Los Angeles Rams, and the centerpiece players were Bennett coming to Buffalo, and future Hall of Fame running back Eric Dickerson moving from the Rams to the Colts, while the Rams collected a huge haul of draft picks, plus Bills running back Greg Bell.

Bennett began paying immediate dividends for the Bills on a defense that showed vast improvement by the end of 1987. In the final game of that season, Bennett had one of the greatest defensive performances in team history as he recorded 16 tackles, 4 sacks and forced 3 fumbles in a loss at Philadelphia.

Starting in 1988, with Bennett teaming with other defensive stalwarts such as Bruce Smith, Daryl Talley, Shane Conlan, and Nate Odomes, the Bills began a glorious era as they won six AFC East division titles and four AFC championships in a span of eight years, and Bennett was a key figure in all of it.

According to ProFootballReference.com, during his nine seasons in Buffalo Bennett made 793 tackles, 52.5 sacks, 6 interceptions, 22 forced fumbles and 19 recoveries.

He left prior to the 1996 season as a free agent and spent three seasons in Atlanta, playing in a fifth losing Super Bowl for the Falcons after the 1998 season. Ironically, he finished his career by playing two years with the Colts, the team that he originally spurned, before retiring prior to the 2001 season.