A Villanova football player tried to rape a classmate in his dorm room, prosecutors say as trial begins

The trial of a former Villanova University football player who prosecutors say tried to rape a classmate in his dorm room in 2019 began Tuesday as the woman told jurors she felt helpless and terrified during the assault.

Iyanu Elijah Solomon, 22, has been charged with attempted rape, attempted sexual assault, unlawful restraint, and related crimes, which prosecutors said took place just eight days into the school year, when Solomon and the woman were both freshmen. The Inquirer is not identifying the woman because it does not name victims in sexual assault cases without their consent.

The woman fought back tears Tuesday as she recounted how Solomon pinned her down on his bed and tried to pull her leggings off while repeatedly asking to have sex with her.

“I really thought I was going to die,” she said. “I felt powerless, with no way to protect myself. I had to figure out how to save myself because no one was coming.”

After Solomon was arrested in March 2021, he was charged in two other alleged sexual assaults on Villanova students. Those cases are being prosecuted separately and have not yet been scheduled for trial.

Delaware County Assistant District Attorney Danielle Gallagher said in her opening statement that Solomon, a former linebacker for the Villanova Wildcats, turned the victim’s time in college into “a journey of pain and survival.”

She struggled academically, emotionally and physically, Gallagher said, but still was able to graduate last spring and pursue a career. But, the prosecutor added, her suffering is not over.

“She has to relive something that happened five years ago that she is trying to forget, in the same room as the man who did this to her,” Gallagher said.

Solomon’s attorney, Daniel Bush, told jurors to use their common sense and critical thinking. He said if they do, they’ll see that the woman’s “action and inaction” after the alleged assault undermines what she said happened. He particularly noted the two-year delay between when the episode took place and when criminal charges were filed.

“That’s a nice story, but this case isn’t about stories,” he said. “It’s about facts.”

The woman, now 22, testified that she had met Solomon through Snapchat in the weeks leading up to her freshman year. She reached out to him through social media, she said, as she sought to meet other African students at Villanova.

Both had arrived at the campus early, Solomon for the football team and she for an academic program intended for new students. During those first few weeks, the woman said, she and Solomon were friendly.

Later, she said, he asked her to send him nude photos, requests she said she refused.

On the night of the assault, the woman said she had returned to Villanova after attending the Made in America Festival on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Solomon texted and called her, she said, saying he needed to talk with her in person.

She hesitated, she said: “Something felt off. Call it intuition, but something in my spirit told me not to go.” Still, she went to his dorm room.

Almost as soon as she arrived, she said, Solomon began pushing her to have sex. Not long after, she said, he pinned her to his bed, held her arms down, groped her and tried to kiss her. As she dodged his advances, the woman said, she began to panic.

In an attempt to get out of Solomon’s grasp, she said she offered to perform oral sex. When he freed her to do so, she said, she tried to run for the door, but he grabbed her wrist and arms and refused to let her go. He relented, she said, only when she began to cry and recite the Lord’s Prayer.

“I felt like there was nothing else I could say to get me out of this,” she said. “I had said ‘stop’ already. I had said ‘no’ already.”

The woman said she did not immediately report the assault, saying her culture looks down on women who do so. She also said she feared that people would not believe her and that she would be harrassed on campus.

Instead, she confided in one of her friends and the resident assistant at her dorm. The RA was required to file a report with campus police, who respected her choice not to file criminal charges.

But she said Solomon continued to contact and harass her, and two years later, in 2021, she told campus police she wanted to press charges.

“I didn’t want this to become my defining moment at Villanova,” she said. “I feel like I was the one who was suffering these last five years. Eighteen-year-old me wouldn’t want that.”

The trial is expected to last through Thursday before Delaware County Court Judge Kevin Kelly.