A Long Island woman, accused of making up rape allegations against two Sacred Heart University football players, testified Wednesday that she never told law enforcement that she was sexually assaulted.
“You never told law enforcement you were sexually assaulted,” a surprised Assistant State’s Attorney Emily Trudeau asked 19-year-old Nikki Yovino.
“No, I never said I was sexually assaulted,” Yovino calmly repeated.
“Well then, why were they investigating a sexual assault?” Trudeau asked her.
“I don’t know,” Yovino said, shrugging.
This is in sharp contrast to what police said Yovino told them after undergoing a rape testing kit at St. Vincent’s Medical Center.
“Our defense is that these two young men did things to her that were a sexual assault and were against her will,” Yovino’s lawyer, Ryan O’Neill told Superior Court Judge William Holden during a pretrial hearing in March. “She had a reasonable belief that she was speaking the truth about what she said occurred.”
But during her testimony before the same judge on Wednesday, during a hearing on the defense’s efforts to keep Yovino’s alleged confession that she made up sexual assault allegations, Yovino insisted at least four times that she never told Police Detective Walberto Cotto Jr. or any other police that she had been sexually assaulted.
“I never told him (Cotto) I was sexually assaulted. I told him that something happened in the bathroom at the party with these two guys, that I didn’t want to happen,” she testified.
Click here to continue reading…
SOURCE: Daniel Tepfer
Connecticut Post
BCNN1 WP 