Former NFL defensive end and Fox Sports commentator Marcellus Wiley was charged Tuesday with raping a student while attending Columbia University 29 years ago, according to a lawsuit reviewed by The Post.
The victim, a sociologist specializing in race and culture, filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court alleging that Wiley, 48, attacked her in the fall of 1994, when she was a sophomore and star running back for the Columbia Lions. I woke you up.
Wiley is accused of forcing himself on her in her freshman dorm room and taking her virginity over persistent verbal protests, an attack that later led her to attempt suicide.
“[Wiley’s] “The conduct was intentionally designed to cause severe emotional distress to the plaintiff, or was conducted with reckless disregard for the serious and/or substantial possibility of causing severe emotional distress to the plaintiff. “This was done,” the complaint states.
The professor, now an Ivy League professor, claims she and Wiley were friends when he invited her into his living room and told her he wanted to listen to music and have dinner with her.
The plaintiff set clear boundaries for the 250-pound football player, telling her she was a virgin and had no interest in having sex with Wiley.
“No one wants to have sex with someone who isn’t a virgin! Don’t worry, I got you. I’m just hanging out while I eat. I don’t even have a condom.” Wiley is said to have told her with a laugh.
But Wiley almost immediately stripped the female freshman student of her clothes and “forced her face down onto the mattress,” the documents state.
The victim said Wiley raped her so many times that she could barely breathe and feared for her life.
She managed to escape, scrambled for clothes and considered running from the room naked, but Wiley verbally threatened her, pulled her back to bed and sexually assaulted her again, according to the complaint.
After disclosing the assault to a friend, the victim reported the rape to a series of Columbia University administrators, all of whom showed “favor” to Wiley and tried to preserve the budding football star’s professional career. He is accused of ignoring the assault.
When one of the administrators showed Wylie the victim’s impact statement, Wylie allegedly “did not agree that it was rape.”
Dormitory director Kathleen McDermott, who died in 2011, is said to have blamed the victim for misunderstanding the horrifying encounter because she was born in Cape Verde County, Africa.
“McDermott then stated to the plaintiff that, in McDermott’s opinion, the defendant did not actually rape the plaintiff because the plaintiff was not from the United States and therefore “people of different cultures interpret things differently. ”, the complaint states, because he misunderstood the defendant’s actions.
Rather than being expelled, Wiley was placed on academic probation and ordered to complete the spring 1995 semester at home in Los Angeles.
He was allowed to return to complete his academic and athletic career, eventually becoming captain of the Lions and leading the team to one of their best seasons in decades.
She claims the victim and a friend who encouraged her to report the assault received a series of harassing phone calls in the months after the minimal punishment was handed down.
“The following spring, while on compulsory leave, Plaintiff attempted suicide. Plaintiff was admitted to a locked hospital ward for two weeks before being released,” the document states.
When Wiley eventually returned to the Manhattan campus, the victim was forced to share several classes with her alleged attacker, who also studied sociology at the Ivy League school.
She became active with the Colombian branch of Take Back the Night, an organization aimed at ending sexual, relationship, and domestic violence, where she met other women and encouraged shared the harrowing story of being raped at Wiley’s hands before and after the assault.
One woman claimed she reported the rape to the school’s athletics director, but the school’s athletic director reportedly decided to keep the accusation secret until Wiley was at a game against rival Princeton. ing.
Wiley was drafted in the second round of the 1997 draft by the Buffalo Bills. He played 10 seasons in the NFL for multiple teams.
After the final season in 2006, Wiley worked on ESPN’s “NFL Live,” then co-hosted the network’s “SportsNation,” before moving to Fox Sports and FS1.
He was allegedly nominated for numerous alumni awards in the years following his graduation, some of which were appropriated by the plaintiff, who worked as associate director of the Core Curriculum Center at Columbia University.
The school reportedly did not relent to her objections due to fear of negative publicity.
The lawsuit accused Columbia University of failing to protect its students from “sexual predators” and reckless neglect.
The Post has reached out to the plaintiffs and Columbia for comment.
The suit was filed in the New York Supreme Court under the Adult Survivors Act. The law allows victims of sexual abuse whose statute of limitations has expired to file civil lawsuits for one year, until Nov. 24.
R&B singer Kathy Ventura filed a bombshell sexual assault lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs last week under the same law, but has since settled it.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-330-0226.
