Woman ‘terrified’ in WCU sex assault

Victim testifies at preliminary hearing

A West Chester University student testified Tuesday that she left a party at a fraternity house with a man who had just moments before sexually assaulted her for one reason: fear.

“I was terrified,” said the woman during a preliminary hearing for fellow WCU student Dylan Michael Strunk, with whom the woman had been friends before the episode last winter. “I didn’t know what was going to happen.

“I did not know what would happen if I tried to run,” said the woman, whose name is being withheld by MediaNews Group because of the nature of the charges against Strunk. “Would he try to hurt me? He had been so aggressive before. I didn’t know what was best to do.”

The woman said that Strunk led her to his apartment across from the WCU campus, and there sexually assaulted her again. It was not until friends that she had alerted via text messages to what was happening started banging on his front door that she was able to leave and get to safety, she said.

“I just wanted my friends to get there,” the woman said in answer to questions from Assistant District Attorney Kathleen Wright, who is prosecuting the case. “I ran out of the house and my friends were waiting with law enforcement.”

Strunk, 20, of Plymouth Meeting, Montgomery County, was ordered held for trial in Common Pleas Court after the 30-minute long proceeding before Magisterial District Judge Marian Vito.

West Chester Police earlier this month charged him with two counts each of rape by forcible compulsion and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse by forcible compulsion, both first-degree felonies. He was also charged with two counts of sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault, unlawful restraint, and false imprisonment, as well as four counts of indecent assault.

A sophomore at the university, Strunk was initially released on

$200,000 bail after his arrest. But after she learned that Strunk had failed to check in with the Chester County Pretrial Services Division and had apparently accessed the woman’s social media accounts despite being told to have no contact with her, Vito increased bail to $275,000, which Strunk’s parents posted almost immediately.

Strunk, who appeared at the hearing with his attorney, Evan Kelly of the law firm Bellwoar and Kelly

of West Chester, and his mother, did not testify. He will be arraigned in Common Pleas Court later this month.

The woman’s account of what happened to her the night of the encounter followed what she told West Chester Detective John O’Hare after the alleged assault.

She said she had attended a party at the fraternity house, Phi Kappa Alpha, commonly referred to as the “Pike House,” in the 300 block of South High Street the night of Feb. 2. There, she met up with Strunk, a person she had known previously and had “hung out” with on two separate occasions. After a dance she performed on a makeshift stage at the party, she said Strunk grabbed her hand and led her to a bathroom on the second floor.

When she asked where they were going, she said he told her he wanted to do something “in private.” They ended up in a thirdfloor bathroom.

There, he pushed her against a wall and pulled her shirt down, telling her to perform oral sex on him. He took off her pants and spun her around, bending her over and slamming her head into a wall. As he had sexual intercourse with her, she again felt her head slam into the wall, and started crying because she was in pain. She said that she told Strunk “no” and asked him to stop, but that he again forced her to have oral sex with him.

After further assaults, Strunk led the woman downstairs and walked her out of the house towards his apartment in the 600 block of South High Street. As they walked, she tried to contact friends to tell them what had happened, and was able to send them her location.

Once they arrived at Strunk’s apartment, she went to the bathroom and sent word to friends to come get her. But when she went to sit on a couch and wait for them, Strunk

started kissing her and took off her pants. When she told him her friends were on the way, he allegedly pushed her face down into some sofa pillows and again forced himself on her.

Again, she told O’Hare, she told Strunk to stop but that he continued to assault her and took her phone away, cursing her friends.

In cross-examining the woman, Kelly tried to flesh out a number of details about the alleged assault, paying particular attention to how loudly she had said “no” to him and told him to stop. He noted that there were people outside the frat house bathroom when they emerged, and that she had encountered his roommate at the apartment.

How vocal had she been in telling him to stop when the roommate was within earshot, Kelley asked.

“My face was smothered into the couch, so I don’t know if anyone could hear it,” she answered.

Strunk