SALT LAKE CITY (Scripps News Salt Lake City/Court TV) — A woman who accuses Nicholas Rossi of raping her took the stand Monday as the prosecution’s first witness.
The alleged victim, who asked to remain anonymous, identified Rossi in court, saying, “He’s a little bit heavier. A little bit older. Aren’t we all?”
Rossi, also known as Nicholas Alahverdian, is facing two trials in Utah for rape allegations. His first trial is currently underway in Salt Lake County, where he’s accused of raping his former girlfriend following an argument in 2008.
Nicholas Rossi, accused of faking his death and fleeing to Europe to avoid rape charges, appears at a jury trial in Salt Lake City, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (Firecrest Films via AP, Pool)
The woman described meeting Rossi 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.
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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.
The woman said Rossi drank and smoked during their relationship, which was deteriorating with Rossi “becoming controlling and saying mean things to me,” she testified.
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On the night of the alleged rape, the victim said Rossi had said something rude to her, so she took off her ring, 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, so 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 decided never to see him again.
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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 that she exchanged 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 Rossi 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 had 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.
In this image made from pool video footage, Nicholas Rossi accused of faking his death and fleeing to Europe to avoid rape charges, appears at a jury trial in Salt Lake City, Monday, Aug. 11, 2025. (Firecrest Films via AP, Pool)
She testified she never spoke to Rossi again. But in 2022, she was “doomscrolling” on her phone when she saw the news about Rossi in Utah County. 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 the woman drove Rossi home.
Rossi’s second trial will take place in Utah County, where he’s accused of raping another woman in 2008. He was not identified as a suspect until about a decade later, due to a backlog of DNA test kits at the Utah State Crime Lab, reported the AP.
This story was originally published by Scripps News Salt Lake City, an E.W. Scripps Company.
