photo by: Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

Illinois guard Terrence Shannon Jr. shoots a free throw during an NCAA college basketball game against Colgate Sunday, Dec. 17, 2023, in Champaign, Illinois.

A popular college bar near the University of Kansas campus was the site of an alleged sexual assault involving a University of Illinois basketball player, according to details included in a recently released arrest affidavit in the case.

As the details emerge, the University of Illinois player also has filed suit against his school to end his suspension in an effort to preserve his NBA draft potential, and is citing a past instance of a rape case in Douglas County that was dismissed as a reason why his suspension should be lifted.

The player, Terrence Edward Shannon Jr., 23, of Champaign, Illinois, is charged in Douglas County District Court with one felony count of rape or, in the alternative, one misdemeanor count of sexual battery, according to charging documents. The incident is alleged to have occurred on Sept. 9, 2023, at the Jayhawk Cafe, 1340 Ohio St., while Shannon was in Kansas to attend a KU football game against Illinois, as the Journal-World reported.

According to a Lawrence police affidavit in support of Shannon’s arrest, the woman was in the Martini Room at the Jayhawk Cafe, commonly known as The Hawk, just after midnight on Sept 9, 2023. The room was crowded and it was hard to move around, the woman told police. She had a drink but had only taken a few sips and was not intoxicated.

An arrest affidavit is a sworn document detailing the probable cause behind a person’s arrest. Allegations contained in affidavits have not been proved in court.

According to the affidavit, the woman and a friend were about to leave the bar when Shannon made eye contact with the woman and motioned her to come over to him, which she did. She said that after she approached, Shannon groped the woman’s buttocks over her skirt then slid his finger into her underwear and assaulted her, according to the affidavit. The woman said that Shannon had a different woman on his other arm at the time.

The woman told police that the interaction took less than a minute and that the physical contact lasted for about 30 seconds. She said that she was unable to move to resist Shannon’s advance because the room was too crowded and that she was shocked at what was happening. She then got away from Shannon and went back to her friend and told her what happened. The woman later went to LMH Health for a sexual assault exam and then reported the incident to the police.

When the woman was asked why she thought Shannon assaulted her, she said “for power” and “just to prove he could do it,” according to the affidavit.

The woman said she did not know Shannon’s name at the time of the assault but was able to identify him through pictures on social media. She initially thought he was an athlete with the University of Kansas because at the bar he was with members of the KU basketball team but after searching several rosters online she found a picture of Shannon on a social media post at the KU football game from the day prior and recognized Shannon’s distinct hairstyle.

The charge was filed against Shannon on Dec. 5, 2023, and he turned himself in to Lawrence police on Dec. 28. He is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 18 to be arraigned. He is currently free on a $50,000 bond.

Shannon was suspended from the University of Illinois men’s basketball team after he turned himself in. On Monday, he filed a temporary restraining order in the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court in Champaign, Illinois, against the university in an effort to be reinstated. He is represented in the suit by attorneys Mark P. Sutter, Rob Lang, Steve Beckett and Mark Goldenberg.

“All we want for our client is a fair process, and TJ has not received that yet. Respectfully, this was a rush to judgment by the University, and the protocol that they implemented to summarily suspend our client ignored the fundamentals of due process and the presumption of innocence,” the attorneys said in a statement about the suit.

The suit claims that Shannon’s basketball career is at stake and that he “has been widely projected to be a ‘lottery pick’ in the National Basketball Association’s (‘NBA’) 2024 draft,” and that “the circumstances of the charges, however, are suspect, emanating from a jurisdiction that has a recent history of wrongfully convicting an African American student of rape.”

The suit then cites the Douglas County case of Albert Wilson. Wilson, 26, was convicted of rape in January 2019 and sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, but after an appeal the court ruled he was entitled to a new trial due to ineffective assistance of counsel. Instead of retrying the case, Douglas County District Attorney Suzanne Valdez dismissed it with prejudice, meaning charges could not be refiled. At the time, the DA said the matter was being resolved through a restorative justice process. Wilson has since filed suit alleging wrongful incarceration.

Shannon’s attorneys claim there were “questionable circumstances” in the police investigation in Wilson’s case and that the investigation into Shannon’s case is similar.

“It is unusual for the prosecution to allege as an alternative a misdemeanor in addition to a felony, and particularly so as it relates to these distinct offenses. This could indicate law enforcement’s lack of confidence in the rape allegation,” the suit said.

Shannon’s suit asks the court to end his suspension now since the legal proceedings in Douglas County won’t likely be resolved until well after the NBA draft in June. The suit argues that the damage to Shannon and his future outweighs the damage that could be done to the University of Illinois by allowing him to play.