Cedar Rapids man pleads to lesser charge in third Iowa City sexual assault

IOWA CITY — A Cedar Rapids man, who was previously convicted of two sexual assaults and sentenced to 44 years in prison, pleaded last week to a lesser charge in another sexual assault.

A fourth charge and a drug charge were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

Carlos Allen Hivento, 37, originally charged with third-degree sexual abuse, pleaded to a lesser charge of assault, a misdemeanor.

According to criminal complaint, Hivento took a woman up to bar rooftop in 2018, and, when she told him she wanted to go back to her friends inside the bar, Hivento pulled her to the ground, causing her to hit her head, and then sexually assaulted her in 2018.

Johnson County Attorney Rachel Zimmermann Smith said the victim had agreed to the resolution in that case.

One of the charges dismissed as part of the plea agreement was another third-degree sexual abuse charge involving a different woman in 2018. She was with friends and Hivento in an apartment, according to a complaint. The woman was asleep — “passed out” — and a witness saw Hivento inappropriately touching the woman.

The second charge dismissed was possession of a controlled substance — cocaine, a serious misdemeanor. On Jan. 8, 2019, Hivento was arrested on a warrant and had cocaine in one of pockets, which deputies discovered when booking him into the Johnson County Jail.

In the written assault plea July 5, Hivento pleaded guilty to possession of contraband on/in grounds of a correction facility, a felony. He faces five years in prison on that charge and will be sentenced on this felony July 22.

Hivento was sentenced in April to 10 years for third-degree sexual abuse after a jury convicted him in February for an attack in 2017 on another rooftop bar in downtown Iowa City.

A judge ran that sentence consecutively to his previous 34-year sentence for a 2021 conviction of five felony counts of third-degree sexual abuse and two counts of invasion of privacy, for a total of 44 years.

The investigation into that assault led to the other three women who accused Hivento of the sexual assaults in 2017 and 2018.

He is imprisoned at the Anamosa State Penitentiary.

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