A woman who confessed that she was trying to get sympathy from a guy she was interested in when she told investigators that two football players dragged her into a bathroom and raped her has changed her story again. She now claims that she never said she was sexually assaulted at all.
Before we delve into this sordid tale, I would be remiss not to point out a very important, often overlooked detail. Most reports on this story, including those of the Connecticut Post and New York Post, refer to 19-year-old Nikki Yovino, the woman who falsely accused two black men of heinous crimes, as a Long Island, N.Y., “teen.” Compare that to how those same outlets refer to an 18-year-old black boy from Ferguson, Mo.:
But I digress.
In February 2017, the angelic college freshman told police that she was repeatedly raped by two black Sacred Heart University football players when she was attending an off-campus party at her Fairfield, Conn., college. The little teenager said that the big black men took turns raping her in a bathroom at the party while the other one held her down.
As in many cases like this, both players claimed that the sex was consensual, but were forced to withdraw from the school after they were stripped of their athletic scholarships. Still, the police investigated and noticed a few inconsistencies in the pure young lady’s story.
One person told the cops that Yovino loudly proclaimed that she was going to have sex with the two fellow students. Others recounted that Yovino was actually the one who coerced the men into the bathroom.
Yovino eventually told the police that she had not been intoxicated and had had sex with the men willingly and that she had made up the allegations to get a prospective boyfriend to have sympathy for her. Police charged her with false reporting of an incident and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.
The beautiful baby, who dropped out of Sacred Heart and now works as a real estate agent, faces six years in prison if she is convicted. She elected to reject a plea deal of one year in jail followed by three years’ probation and will face a jury trial instead. But Yovino stunned the court during a hearing Wednesday when she revealed her defense:
Yovino now says that she never accused anyone of raping her.
According to the Connecticut Post, during a March pretrial hearing, Yovino’s attorneys said, “Our defense is that these two young men did things to her that were a sexual assault and were against her will.”
But on Wednesday, her lawyers sought to keep jurors from hearing the pubescent beauty’s confession that she made up the sexual assault allegations.
“I never told him [police investigator Walberto Cotto Jr.] 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,” the adolescent testified.
During the hearing, prosecutors also played a 45-minute interview between Cotto and Yovino. At first she can be heard telling the detective that the men grabbed her and forced her to have sex. Then she begins to confess.
“Were you forced to do anything in there? Be honest with me,” Cotto calmly asks.
“No, I was scared; it never happened,” Yovino responds.
“I need the truth now,” the detective continues. “You went to the bathroom with the intention of having sex?”
“Yes,” Yovino answers.
But, strangely, even though she says she definitely was not assaulted, Yovino also says that she was pressured into confessing. During the trial, lawyers for the innocent infant want to present two experts on how police coerce confessions out of suspects.
“I started thinking to myself that he was doubting me. He was pushing me and persisting that he knew the truth. I felt that no matter what I said, it wouldn’t be OK with him,” she testified during Wednesday’s hearing. In an exchange with Assistant State’s Attorney Emily Trudeau, Yovino was all over the place:
Emily Trudeau: You never told law enforcement you were sexually assaulted?
Nikki Yovino: No, I never said I was sexually assaulted
ET: Well, then, why were they investigating a sexual assault?
NY (shrugging): I don’t know.
I know what you’re thinking: If there was actually no sexual assault, how can she claim that police coerced her into admitting that there was no sexual assault?
Because, my friends, this is America.