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