The Alexander brothers’ sex-trafficking trial is in its second week, and each sibling has now watched from the defense table as a woman told the jury that he raped her.
In sometimes tearful testimony, these accusers described being drugged, overpowered, or filmed while barely conscious. None reported their alleged assaults to police. The trial is expected to last a month.
Tal Alexander, 39, was a real-estate broker who, along with his brother Oren Alexander, 38, sold multimillion-dollar properties in Miami and Manhattan to wealthy and influential clients. The third brother, Alon Alexander — Oren’s twin — is a former executive at their parents’ private security firm.
All three brothers are being held without bail and face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Here are the women’s accounts and the defense case presented so far.
The first accuser said Alon drugged and raped her after a party with Zac Efron.
The first rape accuser testified under the pseudonym Katie Moore about an incident in Manhattan in 2012, when she was a 20-year-old marketing intern. Moore described a night of partying with a small group that included her friend Ainsley, Tal Alexander, Alon Alexander, and the brothers’ then-friend, actor Zac Efron.
Moore told the jury she collapsed at a nightclub after one sip from a drink handed to her by one of Tal’s friends.
When she came to, she said, she was naked on a bed in the two brothers’ shared Manhattan apartment. “I don’t want to have sex with you,” she said she told Alon, who was standing at the side of the bed, also naked.
“But you already did,” she testified he told her, laughing, before raping her again.
Jurors saw text exchanges in which Moore told her boyfriend of the alleged rape, and heard from two friends who said she told them, too. “My advice was that it would be ineffective to go to the police,” given that the Alexanders were “powerful people,” testified one friend, now a lawyer in Massachusetts.
The defense is arguing that photos from the evening show Moore drinking and having fun — including one taken by Efron that she uploaded to Facebook the next morning. The defense suggests that Moore had consensual sex with Alon and repeatedly lied to hide it from her boyfriend.
The second accuser said Tal raped her in a shower
The second rape accuser testified under the pseudonym Maya Miller about an incident at a luxurious beachfront Hamptons rental in 2016, when she was a 24-year-old aspiring model about to enter nursing school.
Miller testified that she spent the second evening at the house rebuffing Tal’s advances and guarding herself and her friend Alicia, who had lost consciousness after half a glass of wine. (Miller said she herself had poured any drink that was handed to her down the sink when no one was looking).
“This is how you thank me for inviting you to a beautiful home?” Miller said Tal angrily asked her the next morning, chasing her into the bedroom’s shower, where she said he grabbed her by the neck and raped her. “You wanted that,” she said he told her afterward.
Jurors heard from two friends who described Miller tearfully telling them about the alleged attack. Jurors also saw an email from Tal to Alon reading, “See below these cheap hookers coming to the Hamptons.”
The defense questioned why Miller never spoke with Alicia about the incident, and pointed to photos of the two women enjoying high tea at the Plaza Hotel once they returned to Manhattan. They also showed the jury friendly text messages Miller shared with Tal before flying home.
The third accuser was barely conscious during a videotaped night with Oren
The third accuser took the stand under the pseudonym Amelia Rosen.
Rosen said she was 17 and an aspiring model from Ukraine in 2009, when Oren, then 21, and a second, unnamed man videotaped themselves having sex with her in a Manhattan bedroom.
Rosen has no memory of that evening and told the jury she learned of the video when she was contacted by federal prosecutors, who say it shows her naked, stumbling and, at times, unable to move.
“I can hardly understand what I was saying,” Rosen said tearfully, when shown a snippet of what prosecutor Andrew Jones has called a “trophy tape,” depicting the twin “stone-cold sober” as he sets up a tripod.
Both sides had warned the jury during opening statements that the video may be disturbing, and some jurors appeared visibly upset when they viewed it in court on Thursday.
“It will be unnerving to you,” Oren’s defense lawyer, Teny Geragos, told the panel’s six men and six women. But “what this video shows is not sex trafficking,” Geragos added.
The fourth accuser said she was drugged and unable to scream
The fourth accuser, a Ukrainian native who testified under the pseudonym Bella Koval, described being drugged and raped in 2016 while guests of the brothers at the same Hamptons rental described by the second accuser.
Koval, then a 23-year-old model, said she and the friend she brought, Alison, met the brothers on the exclusive dating app Raya.
She told jurors that a few sips from a “fruity,” ice-filled drink, handed to her by Oren, left her teetering on her high heels during a poolside party. A glass of water handed to her by Alon, who had helped her into a first-floor bedroom, then left her conscious but unable to move, she testified.
“He had no expression other than this brooding anger,” during the rape that evening, Koval testified. “I was unable to scream,” she testified.
Koval testified that her friend Alison told her she was “gang raped” that night. Koval also told jurors that in the following hours and days, she told an ex-boyfriend and two female friends she’d been drugged and raped.
The defense challenged Koval’s testimony that she was not a heavy drinker and her decision to stay at the Hamptons house a second day. Koval blamed the home’s isolation, the Labor Day “surge pricing” for car service, and her fear of the brothers’ power and influence.
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