A woman who admitted to falsely accusing two Sacred Heart University football players of rape was denied an early end to probation.
Superior Court Judge Tracy Lee Dayton denied former SHU student Nikki Yovino’s request to cut her probation in half, citing the fact that Yovino previously agreed to the plea bargain that spared her a much longer jail sentence during her 2018 trial. Yovino faced six years in prison after she admitted to falsely accusing the two football players. Thanks to a last-minute plea deal, however, Yovino spent less than a year in prison followed by three years of probation, which she is halfway through.
The Connecticut Post reported that Yovino wasn’t present in the court room for the hearing and that her attorney, Ryan O’Neill, told the judge his client wanted to go home to Long Island after living in Ridgefield with relatives.
“Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Tatiana Messina opposed any probation reduction for Yovino. She argued that Yovino has not presented any proof that she underwent a mental health evaluation and treatment as required by her probation,” the outlet reported.
Yovino accused the two football players of sexual assault in 2016 after attending a party at a house near SHU. She claimed two men pulled her into a bathroom in the basement and sexually assaulted her.
“I don’t want to be in here, I don’t want to do anything. My friends are waiting for me outside, let me go outside,” Yovino told police she said to the men.
Both football players admitted they had sex with Yovino, but said it was consensual. A witness testified that Yovino said she wanted to have sex with the athletes. Police detectives all noted “inconsistencies in [Yovino’s] original statement.”
Police also reported that Yovino told them the two football players held her down and took a turn sexually assaulting her. During her trial, however, Yovino suddenly claimed she never told police she was sexually assaulted. It was an astounding claim to make based on her admission to falsely accusing the two men of sexual assault and what her lawyer had previously argued in court.
“Our defense is that these two young men did things to her that were a sexual assault and were against her will,” O’Neill told Superior Court Judge William Holden during a pretrial hearing in March 2018, according to the Post. “She had a reasonable belief that she was speaking the truth about what she said occurred.”
On the witness stand, Assistant State’s Attorney Emily Trudeau asked Yovino, “You never told law enforcement you were sexually assaulted?” after the then-19-year-old made her claim.
“No, I never said I was sexually assaulted,” Yovino replied.
Trudeau asked her why the police were investigating a sexual assault then, and Yovino said she didn’t know. Yovino underwent a rape testing kit just before talking to police about the incident in 2016.
“I never told [the detective] 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,” Yovino testified.
Yovino reportedly made up the false allegation in order to avoid losing a male friend whom she saw as a “potential boyfriend.”
As The Daily Wire previously reported, the two falsely accused men filed a lawsuit against Yovino and SHU.