A Date With Destiny

Nov. 3, 2006— -- For most lonely hearts trolling Match.com for a love connection, the biggest risk tends to be discovering that Prince Charming is just a swampy frog.

But some women who use online dating services have faced real danger when their suitor turns out be a sexual predator or rapist.

Jeffrey Marsalis, a 33-year-old Philadelphia drifter accused of drugging and sexually assaulting seven women, is currently in jail and faces trial on eight counts of rape and other related charges.

At a preliminary hearing on Tuesday, five of the alleged victims claimed that they met Marsalis through Match.com between 2003 and 2005. Last January, Marsalis, a former Drexel University nursing student, was acquitted by a jury on similar charges of raping women whom he'd met over the Internet.

The smooth-talking lothario was a master of guile when it came to luring the women. In e-mails or on the phone, Marsalis claimed he was a CIA agent, a confidential adviser to the president, a doctor or an astronaut-in-training. (He posted pictures of himself wearing medical scrubs, a suit and an astronaut's uniform on his Match.com profile, according to law enforcement sources.)

When the women agreed to meet Marsalis in person at a restaurant or bar, he allegedly used the same technique on all of them: After the women left their drinks to go to the restroom, they'd describe later feeling sick and falling in and out of consciousness with vague recollections of being sexually assaulted and waking up in his bed.

"I couldn't say no," said one woman in her testimony at the hearing. "I was unable to do anything in the five seconds I was conscious."

In other accounts at the hearing, one woman described becoming pregnant and convincing Marsalis to help pay for an abortion, and another woman recounted spending the weekend with him, even after he had allegedly attacked her.

Those reactions led Marsalis' defense lawyers, Kathleen Martin and Kevin Hexstall, to claim that the sex was consensual. "It wouldn't be buyer's remorse if one of these girls went running to the police, but not one of these girls called 911 or talked to a detective," Hexstall told The Philadelphia Inquirer.