Former NFL star sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging and raping two women

Former NFL star and convicted rapist Darren Sharper has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.



Sharper, who played for Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints during his playing career, admitted to drugging and raping two women.The Daily Record reports the 41-year-old pleaded no contest to charges in California of rape by use of drugs and furnishing a controlled substance.

District Attorney spokeswoman Jane Robinson said this was the last sentencing the former Super Bowl winner faced for crimes committed in various different states.

The sentence will run concurrently with a previous 18-year sentence handed down in a federal court in Louisiana on similar charges.

In the California case, Sharper admitted to meeting two women at a West Hollywood nightclub in October 2013 and later inviting them to his hotel room. He gave both of the women a drink, which made them both pass out, prosecutors said.

One woman woke up naked hours later with Sharper sexually assaulting her and the second woman woke up and stopped the attack, prosecutors said.

Months later, in January 2014, Sharper met two separate women and followed the same procedure, prosecutors said.
The two women woke up hours later and one woman believed she had been sexually assaulted. Both left the hotel and sought medical treatment, prosecutors said.

Sharper, a five-time Pro Bowl safety who retired from the NFL in 2011 after helping lead the New Orleans Saints to a Super Bowl championship, had pleaded guilty in federal court in Louisiana in May 2015 to distributing controlled substances to three unsuspecting women and then sexually assaulting them while they were incapacitated.