All charges have been dropped against a
former Temple football player who was
accused of raping a woman in a dorm.
The news came on what was supposed to be the first
day of jury selection for Praise Martin-Oguike, 20,
who was arrested May 30, 2012 and kicked out of
Temple soon after.
A Temple business student from Maryland accused
him of raping her inside his dorm room on Park
Avenue and Norris streets four days before his arrest.
Martin-Oguike, an native of Nigeria who was raised
since age 10 in Sewaren, N.J., by his pastor father
and poet mother, maintained that the sexual activity
was consensual.
"For the past 18 months, this young man has lived
under a terrible cloud," said his attorney, James Funt.
"After being branded as a rapist for a crime he did not
commit, he was ostracized, stripped of his athletic
scholarship, kicked out of Temple University and
vilified nationally and on the Internet. The stain on his
reputation and the impact on his life will never be
completely erased."
Late last month Funt, who is seeking to have the case
expunged, filed a motion asking Common Pleas Judge
Denis Cohen to allow the woman's text messages
between friends to be entered as trial evidence to
expose her motive for allegedly lying about being
raped.
Funt argued that she had been rejected by several
other men, including football players, and did not
want to get a campus reputation as a football
"groupie" after Martin-Oguike "would not agree to
have a romantic long-term relationship with her."
Funt told the judge that the text messages would
show that the woman lied about when she last had
sex before the alleged rape and would expose that
she was injured having sex with another man. In one,
which Funt read in court, the woman texted a friend
about another sexual encounter two weeks before the
alleged rape, remarking on how well-endowed the
man was:
"I couldn't deal I was like screaming so much that he
put a pillow in my mouth lmfao," the message said in
part.
A call to Assistant District Attorney Ashley Lynam,
who handled the case, was not returned.

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God will help dem to know d truth

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