A woman who has been charged with lying about being raped by two men has now said she never claimed she had been assaulted.
Nikki Yovino, from New York, appeared in court in Connecticut this week for a hearing as part of her upcoming trial.
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She is charged with second-degree falsely reporting an incident and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, the Connecticut Post reports.
Yovino, 19, is accused of lying to cops about an alleged rape in which she said two football players from Sacred Heart University sexually assaulted her in a bathroom at a party in 2016.
Police said that she reported the incident to them, saying: "Something happened in the bathroom that I did not want to happen."
In reports by the police, Yovino is recorded as telling investigators she told the two men: '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.'"
At a pre-trial hearing in March, her lawyer Ryan O'Neill told Judge William Holden said: "She had a reasonable belief that she was speaking the truth about what she said occurred."
However, this week she appeared to go back on that testimony, telling the court: "I never told him [the detective involved in the case] 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,"
After making the claim, assistant state attorney Emily Trudeau asked: "You never told law enforcement you were sexually assaulted?"
To which Yovino replied: "No, I never said I was sexually assaulted."
Trudeau asked: "Well then, why were they investigating a sexual assault?"
"I don't know," Yovino responded.
She told the court four times during her testimony that she had never claimed to Bridgeport Police Detective Walberto Cotto and other investigators that she had been raped.
At the time of the initial investigation, both men said the encounter was consensual, which was backed up by a number of other party goers who say they saw Yovino go into the bathroom 'willingly'.
After spotting inconsistencies in her statements, police said Yovino later admitted to making up the allegations.
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An arrest warrant affidavit seen by the New York Post claims the woman made up the allegations for 'sympathy' from a student she wanted to start a relationship with.
It reads: "She stated that she believed when [the other male student] heard the allegation it would make him angry and sympathetic to her."
Yovino was offered a plea deal in January of this year, which would have seen her jailed for two years, however she rejected it and has since been trying to get the case against her dropped.
Source: Connecticut Post; New York Post
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