Nancy Dillon
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Marcellus Wiley in 2023 in Los Angeles Araya Doheny/Getty Images for Shine Global Inc Marcellus Wiley, the retired NFL player, sportscaster, and podcaster, is facing newly revealed sexual assault allegations from four more accusers, including a former ESPN production assistant.
The women’s allegations surfaced this month in new court filings after three other women previously sued Wiley with allegations he raped them in New York when he was a student and star football player at Columbia University in 1994.
In statements signed under penalty of perjury, the new accusers say Wiley’s Ivy League pedigree and clean public image helped him gain their trust. Their lawyer alleges Columbia “hid the rapes by Wiley” on campus, “enabling him to enjoy a reputation of safety, respect, and integrity, thereby endangering women” who later encountered him.
Wiley, who’s married to former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member Annemarie Wiley, and his lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment. After the first lawsuit was filed in 2023, Wiley reportedly called the claims “B.S.” on his YouTube show. In a 2024 court filing, his former lawyer said Wiley “denies the allegations that he sexually assaulted or raped any students of Columbia University.”
“Defendant denies that he committed any of the wrongs alleged, denies that plaintiff or any other purported members of the class were harmed by him, and denies that the claims in the complaint are properly asserted as a class action,” Wiley’s lawyer wrote in an answer to one of the Jane Doe lawsuits. A lawyer for Columbia did not respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment but said in a filing that any injuries allegedly caused by Wiley “were out of the control of Columbia.”
Among the new accusers identified in the latest filings are two women who say Wiley assaulted them between 1995 and 1999 in California, as well as a Jane Doe who claims she was 13 years old when Wiley first approached her. That woman alleges Wiley, then playing for the Buffalo Bills, targeted her as a minor after a visit to her middle school in Buffalo, N.Y.
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“Wiley drove towards me, slowed down, and pulled over. He lowered the window, called me by name, and asked me to come over,” she wrote in a statement obtained by Rolling Stone. She says Wiley gave her his email address and later showered her family with free game tickets and invitations to his Orchard Park, N.Y., home. She says he regularly invited her back, asking for help cleaning his CD collection.
“Wiley frequently mentioned his sociology degree from Columbia University, which led me to believe he was respected and trustworthy. He gave me the same CDs to clean over and over,” she wrote, adding that he called her his “little momma” and showered her with attention and gifts. “My whole identity was wrapped up in the belief that I would eventually marry Wiley,” she wrote.
On her 18th birthday, she claims, Wiley flew her to Dallas, where he was playing for the Cowboys. She alleges he shouted at her in a frightening manner and coerced her into sex. “Marcellus Wiley raped me on my 18th birthday, after grooming me from the age of 13,” she wrote. “If Columbia had properly pursued the complaints… I would never have been groomed and raped.”
The former ESPN assistant alleges Wiley lured her to a hotel room in 2009 under the guise of a work meeting, then emerged naked from a bathroom and attacked her. “He pushed me up against the windows of the room so hard I thought they would shatter,” she wrote. “I was petrified and believed I was going to be killed.”
The woman says she repeatedly begged Wiley to stop, but he forced her onto a bed and masturbated over her. “The assault was devastating to me, and I will live with the effects to this day,” she wrote.
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The two other new accusers allege Wiley raped them in the late 1990s after Columbia placed him on probation over earlier sexual assault complaints. One says he attacked her at her mother’s Culver City apartment while her family was nearby. “Wiley overpowered me and raped me,” she wrote. “Afterward, I felt humiliated and ashamed… so I never told anyone.”
The other woman alleges Wiley raped her in a hotel in 1999, when she was a USC senior. She claims she reported the alleged rape to the LAPD and was re-contacted by police years later during another purported investigation that did not lead to charges. (A spokesperson for the LAPD declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of sexual assault reports.)
Allegations from the four new accusers were filed in New York as part of a push by one of the Columbia Jane Does to turn her previously filed case into a class action against Wiley and the university. That woman first sued in 2023, alleging that in November 1994, when she and Wiley were students, he invited her to his dorm room to study.
“We spent about 15 minutes listening to music and talking when, without warning, Wiley pulled back the bedding to reveal that he was completely naked from the waist down,” she said in her filing. She alleges he forced her to perform oral sex, then put on a condom and raped her.
The woman says she reported the alleged assault to school officials but was advised by a dean not to go to police and instead let the university handle the incident to protect her reputation. She took part in a disciplinary hearing alongside another student with a similar allegation, she says, and was later told Wiley would be placed on probation, not expelled.
The two other former Columbia students with pending lawsuits say Wiley raped them in dorm rooms on Oct. 10 and Nov. 18, 1994. One says she was a virgin at the time. She claims she reported the alleged assault and that school officials told her Wiley would be suspended and that the discipline would go on his permanent record.
The third student, who filed suit on March 5, 2025, says Wiley raped her in his dorm room at Wien Residence Hall after she repeatedly said no. She alleges he “lunged” at her and overpowered her. When she reported it the next day, she says, an official allegedly told her any investigation would have to wait because Wiley “had a big game coming up against Princeton.”
Lawyer Laura Gentile, who represents the women, argues in her new motion seeking the class action status that Columbia knew about multiple rape allegations but only placed Wiley on “academic probation,” listing “poor grades” in his records instead of misconduct. He was allowed to finish the spring 1995 semester from home in Los Angeles and was never formally suspended, the filing says. The university also did not report the allegations to police.
