When Nicholas Rossi’s ex-girlfriend completed a sexual assault kit at a Provo clinic in 2008 after she said he raped her in his Orem apartment, the kit was never tested, and the case never made it to a prosecutor’s desk.
When Nicholas Rossi’s ex-girlfriend completed a sexual assault kit at a Provo clinic in 2008 after she said he raped her in his Orem apartment, the kit was never tested, and the case never made it to a prosecutor’s desk.
When Nicholas Rossi’s ex-girlfriend completed a sexual assault kit at a Provo clinic in 2008 after she said he raped her in his Orem apartment, the kit was never tested, and the case never made it to a prosecutor’s desk.
Seventeen years later, after deliberating for around five hours Wednesday afternoon, jurors found Rossi, 38, guilty of one charge of first-degree felony rape.
At the time of the assault, the victim was 21 years old and attending Utah Valley University. The Salt Lake Tribune generally doesn’t identify alleged victims of sexual assault without their consent.
When the case was reopened more than a decade later, she told the jury, she was reluctant to revisit it. She wasn’t surprised when Rossi wasn’t charged in 2008, she said during her six-hour, two-day testimony, because she feels sexual assault victims are rarely believed and “nothing ever comes from [allegations].”
Even so, she decided to complete a sexual assault kit at the time — not for herself, she said, but “just in case he starts doing this to other females.”
“I know the statistics of rape allegations; I didn’t want to put myself through that,” she said, when asked why she waited until the next day to report the rape. “That’s why it took me a while and it took me calling my friend to decide to go.”
According to RAINN, the nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization, out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, only 50 lead to an arrest, about 28 result in a felony conviction and about 25 end with a perpetrator sentenced to incarceration.
Rossi wasn’t held accountable in 2008 — not because the victim stayed silent, but because her report wasn’t taken seriously, prosecutor Stephen Jones said in closing arguments Wednesday.
The lead investigator on the case, former Orem police Sgt. Yolanda Stewart, testified that she initially intended to arrest Rossi and pursue charges but ultimately felt there wasn’t enough evidence that would hold up in court.
Prosecutors said Stewart wrote in her report that the victim told her she had dinner with Rossi after the rape and that he had repaid the money he owed her.
Based on that conversation, Stewart seemed to decide “that’s not how a real rape victim will act” and closed the case, prosecutor McKay Lewis told the jury.
Stewart testified that she had to persuade the victim to complete a sexual assault kit — an action Utah County public defender Daniel Diaz argued showed the woman was hesitant to pursue the case.
Jones agreed, telling the jury “she didn’t want to come forward” because “she knew the low numbers.”
“And that’s exactly what happened,” he said. “The case was never referred. She had to come to court and be asked humiliating questions.”
The victim’s sexual assault kit was filed into evidence, but it wasn’t tested until nearly a decade later, prosecutors said.
It was one of more than 2,000 kits in Utah that sat stored without analysis. Hers was eventually analyzed after the state launched a Sexual Assault Kit Initiative to process all of the untested kits — and in 2020, state officials announced, the years-long backlog had been cleared.
Outside the state crime lab in Taylorsville, Rep. Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, said at the time that, “In many cases, maybe their perpetrator won’t be caught, but at least we know their DNA is in [the national DNA database] CODIS, and that if they do it again, and they’re caught, we can catch them.”
Rossi’s defense pointed to discrepancies in five different statements the victim gave to officers and argued that they prove his innocence. Public defender Daniel Diaz also argued that the victim’s reluctance to see the case go to trial showed “she wasn’t here for justice.”
“She wasn’t here to get her day in court. She wasn’t here to dispel that false notion that rape cases don’t go anywhere,” Diaz argued. “She wasn’t excited to actually get her chance to prove anything about what had happened.”
Susan Chasson, the sexual assault nurse examiner program manager for the Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault, testified that it’s common for rape victims to be reluctant to undergo an exam.
“The majority of women never come in and never tell,” she said. “Especially after being traumatized, I would say it’s not unusual for them to not want to come in for an exam.”
Rossi — who made international headlines for fleeing the United States for Scotland, allegedly faking his death in 2020 and living under another identity — said nothing during the trial.
In a separate case in Salt Lake County, Rossi was convicted in August of raping his former fiancée in December 2008 and is scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 20.
The woman did not immediately report the rape to law enforcement, but contacted police in 2022 when Rossi’s story of fleeing the United States for Scotland was in the news. Rossi was extradited to the United States in 2024, after he was charged with rape in Utah County.
(Andrew Milligan | PA via AP) Nicholas Rossi leaves Edinburgh Sheriff And Justice Of The Peace Court after an extradition hearing, in Edinburgh, July 12, 2022.
In closing arguments, Diaz argued that Rossi, who was living under the name Arthur Knight, denied his identity to the court in Scotland to avoid being “ripped out of his life and sent back to the United States after he had built a new life.”
“He’s not on trial for denying his identity,” Diaz told the jury.
In rebuttal, Jones contended that when claiming to be Knight, Rossi had “proceeded to tell an incredibly elaborate backstory, seemingly from a Charles Dickens novel” about how he was an orphan from Ireland who made a living selling books on the streets of London.
“Why? Because he knew he was guilty of a rape,” Jones argued. “This is the consciousness of guilt.”
Rossi was previously wanted in Rhode Island for failing to register as a sex offender and also faces fraud charges in Ohio, where he was convicted of sex-related offenses in 2008.
Rossi is scheduled to be sentenced in the Orem case on Nov. 4 at the 4th District Court in Provo.