SALT LAKE CITY — Nicholas Rossi's rape trial has gotten under way, with the alleged victim taking the witness stand as the prosecution's first witness.
Rossi sat quietly in court next to his lawyers. He is in a wheelchair and is relying on an oxygen tank.
The trial began with prosecutors stipulating to the jury that Rossi is also Nicholas Alahverdian. They also agreed for the jury that he lived in Utah and had a relationship with a 24-year-old woman in 2008. Authorities believed that Rossi had died in 2020. Then, he turned up in a hospital in the United Kingdom, recovering from COVID-19.
Rossi identified himself in a 2022 FOX 13 News interview as "Arthur Knight" and insisted authorities have the wrong person, because he had never been to Utah. But during Monday's trial, prosecutors told the jury that last year that Rossi acknowledged his real identity in a prior court hearing.
On the witness stand, the alleged victim (whom FOX 13 News is not identifying) pointed out Rossi, saying: "He’s a little bit heavier. A little bit older. Aren’t we all?"
She described meeting him online in November 2008 as she was recovering from a brain injury suffered in a car accident. By all appearances, it was a whirlwind relationship. Their first date, she said, was on her birthday.
"He was very charming and seemed very interested in school and politics and music, and he was just very nice to me," she told the jury.
But the woman described always being asked to come up with money for dates, to fix a tire, and even $1,000 to help Rossi avoid being evicted from his apartment. She had him over for Thanksgiving dinner with her parents. On Black Friday, they found themselves at the Gateway mall, where they looked at engagement rings, she said.
"Unfortunately, Nick didn’t have the credit score to get the rings, so I had to co-sign on them," she testified.
They had only been seeing each other for two weeks, but she was interested in marriage at the time, she told the jury. They bought the rings and she started wearing hers. Rossi pushed for her to marry him in a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints even though she was starting to drift away from her faith (and she said he was also drinking and may have been smoking), she said.
The relationship also was deteriorating with Rossi "becoming controlling and saying mean things to me," she testified. Once, when he said something rude to her, the woman said, she took off her ring and threw it in her purse and walked to her car. He followed her, she testified, yelling at her and pounding on the exterior of the car. She finally let him in to drive him home, she told the jury.
"He was just yelling at me the whole time on the way back to his house," she said.
On the drive home, the woman testified, Rossi calmed down. She agreed to go into his house.
"Were you thinking about going inside to rekindle the relationship?" Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Brandon Simmons asked her.
"I was more to the point of 'Let’s end it,'" she said.
When they went into Rossi's bedroom, the woman tearfully told the jury that he pushed her to the bed, held her down and "forced me to have sex with him." She was afraid of him and froze, the woman testified. When she left his home, she made the decision to never see him again. Rossi did communicate with her afterward, she told the jury. She changed her phone number later that week because she was trying to "wean him off of talking to me."
"I was a little bit more of a timid person back then and so it was harder for me to stand up for myself," she said.
Still, she testified, she did exchange some emails, but she never saw him in person again. The woman said she sold her engagement ring to someone else but had to pay for both rings. A few weeks later, she took him to small claims court.
"As soon as that happened, he started harassing me and sent me a [cease-and-desist]," she testified.
She dropped the small claims court proceeding, the woman testified. She told the jury that she told her parents that she had been assaulted, but her father made a "rude comment and dismissed me." The woman admitted she did not go to the police because of her parents' reaction.
She testified she never spoke to Rossi again. But in 2022, the woman said she was "doomscrolling" on her phone when she saw a news item about Rossi in Utah County (he has been accused of a sexual assault case there). She texted a friend who helped her reach out to the authorities.
Under cross-examination by Rossi's defense attorney on Monday afternoon, the woman acknowledged she had never experienced any type of physical abuse from Rossi before their argument and the alleged rape. But she insisted she had let him know the relationship was over, even though defense attorney Samantha Dugin pointed out she drove Rossi hime.
The trial is scheduled to continue through the end of the week.
