Mirvan Dinler to face Delaware District judge over rape and related charges

A Montgomery County man who prosecutors say raped a Villanova University student the person who hired him via Uber to take him back to his dorm. He denies the allegations and will vigorously fight the charges in court, his lawyer said Thursday.

Trappe’s Mirvan Dinler “must be acquitted and acquitted,” attorney Shaka Johnson said, because there were “glaring, glaring cracks” in the woman’s account of what happened that night.

“This case is about credibility, who do you believe,” Johnson said after Dinler’s preliminary hearing in Newtown Square. “You’ve only heard one story so far… but believe me, there will be a different version coming soon.”

Assistant District Attorney Danielle Gallaher declined to comment following the hearing before District Judge Sloan Walker.

Dinler, 26, was charged Oct. 3 with rape, involuntary sexual intercourse and related offenses in connection with the rape reported a month earlier on the college campus in Radnor.

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The woman, a senior at Villanova, testified Thursday that she had been drinking with friends, first in a dorm room and then in an apartment, before the group’s planned trip to the Warehouse on Watts, a bar in North Philadelphia.

The woman said she drank three glasses of wine and two shots in about two hours, an unusually large amount of alcohol for her. The woman, who said she felt dizzy and sick after arriving at the bar in the city, decided to return home.

“I knew I wasn’t feeling well and I didn’t want my friends to have to babysit me,” she said.

He ordered an Uber from his phone, and Dinler came to pick him up in his Toyota Prius, according to Thursday’s testimony. The woman said she didn’t remember much afterward, except texting one of her friends and apologizing for having to leave suddenly.

Her next memory was waking up drunk and confused as Dinler raped her in her dorm room. He said he was too scared to fight back or ask for help.

“I decided to just lay there and let it happen because he was a stranger and I didn’t know what was going on” or if it would hurt him further if he resisted, she said.

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Investigators said security footage captured Dinler helping the woman walk to her dorm, and a key card given by the student opened the dorm room door minutes later.

The woman said Dinler left after the attack but returned a few minutes later, banging loudly on the door. She tried to ignore him, hoping he would leave until the assistant on the floor told him to leave.

Dinler had told RA that he wouldn’t leave until the woman paid him to cover the cost of cleaning her car after she vomited on the way back from Philadelphia.

He gave Dinler his phone and said he paid him through an app because it was clear to him that he wouldn’t leave otherwise.

Dinler’s lawyer, Johnson, said his client denied the allegations. Johnson said he was also a student and was trying to support himself and his wife by driving for Uber.

Judge Walker ruled that prosecutors presented enough evidence to send the case to district court and that Dinler will be arraigned on January 2.