An Ohio University student’s pretrial was continued from Dec. 19 to Jan. 28 where he will face charges for allegedly blackmailing another male OU student to have sex with him.
Dorian Graham, 19, was indicted in the Athens County Common Pleas Court Nov. 25.
He pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual battery, one count of extortion, one count of attempted sexual battery and one count of attempted extortion.
The first two charges are felonies of the third degree, and the latter charges are of the fourth degree, according to the Ohio Revised Code.
Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn said that Graham allegedly texted the victim at a wrong number, but ended up posing “as a female in order to lure the victim to have sex with him.”
He later convinced the victim to send naked photos of himself using the app SnapChat, and took screenshots of the photos to post to Instagram.
Blackburn said the sexual conduct took place at the end of September and once during October, though she did not go through with it a second time.
Graham was placed on a bond of $10,000, though he is free on his own recognizance until he is due back in court.
He is scheduled for a jury trial Feb. 25, according to court documents.
Blackburn said he wanted to take the opportunity to “remind students that the things you set out (on the Internet) have the ability of being reproduced,” seeing as Graham’s case is not the first case of sexual exploitation and use of social media at OU this fall.
@KellyPFisher
