Posts tagged: decide

Three wealthy brothers, 10 rape accusers, one shocking indictment.

On Monday, the Alexander brothers — a trio who enjoyed money, good looks, and access to expensive homes and resorts around the world — will sit through the third day of deliberations in their federal sex-trafficking trial.

A Manhattan jury is considering the fates of these three men, former luxury real estate brokers Tal and Oren Alexander, and Oren’s twin brother Alon, who worked for his parents’ private security firm.

There is much to weigh.

Ten women, all testifying under pseudonyms, told jurors they were raped — sometimes through violence, sometimes after being drugged senseless, sometimes by more than one brother at once.

None called the police.

Prosecutors have argued that there was too much corroborating evidence, too much genuine pain in the women’s words for their accounts to be false.

Defense lawyers countered that the sex was consensual, and that the women later invented or imagined stories of violence and violation out of regret or in hopes of a lawsuit payday.

After testimony by more than 30 prosecution witnesses and three witnesses for the defense, a six-man, six-woman jury must now agree on a complex, ten-count indictment that could put the brothers away for life.

Here is a count-by-count roadmap to that still-pending decision.

Count one: sex trafficking conspiracy

All three brothers are charged with conspiring to sex traffic four women who testified they were lured with something of value (a Hamptons beach getaway), only to be drugged or overpowered and then raped.

The youngest testified that she was drugged and raped at a Hamptons party by two brothers and two other men in 2009, after sneaking away from her boarding school, missing her high school prom.

To convict on this top count, jurors must find that between 2008 and 2021, the Alexanders worked together to get at least one of the four women to the Hamptons with the purpose of attacking her. They must also find that, for at least one woman, force, fraud, or coercion was then used to compel sex with at least one of the brothers.

All three brothers are charged with this count, which carries a potential sentence of 10 years to life in prison.

Count two: the sex trafficking Lindsey Acree

Lindsey Acree, who has a lawsuit pending against the brothers, told jurors that she was 25 when she and a girlfriend were invited to the siblings’ East Hampton rental home in 2011.

Acree said that soon after arriving, she was urged to enjoy the backyard jacuzzi, where Tal handed her a glass of wine that made her feel like a “zombie.”

She said that when she regained consciousness, Tal and a second man were raping her on the floor of the home’s gym.

At some point in her assault, Tal set up a tripod and camera, she said. “They were laughing a lot,” she told jurors of the two men. “I was on the ground. I couldn’t move.”

Tal alone is charged with this count.

Count three: Sex Trafficking Bela Koval

Bela Koval, a native of Ukraine, told jurors she was a 25-year-old model when Alon paid for her and a girlfriend to fly from Chicago to New York for a weekend at the brothers’ Sag Harbor rental home in 2016.

All three brothers greeted the women at the door, she said. They were taken yachting and served meals prepared by a private chef — expenses that prosecutors say the brothers shared.

Koval told the jury that at a pool party the next day, she sipped a drink handed to her by Oren that made her unsteady, “like a wave overtook my body.”

She said she felt still worse — “like my whole body was tranquilized” — after Alon gave her a glass of water. “I was unable to scream” as Oren raped her, she testified.

All three brothers are charged with sex-trafficking Koval.

Count four: sex trafficking Maya Miller

Maya Miller told jurors she was a 23-year-old aspiring model and about to enter nursing school when she and a girlfriend were invited by Tal to a summer weekend at the brothers’ Sag Harbor home in 2014.

Miller told the jury that she agreed because Tal promised to reimburse her for her flight from Nevada to New York and that the trip would be all-expenses-paid.

“It was the biggest home I’d ever been in,” she said of the mansion, where she and her friend were treated to a boat ride and meals by a private chef.

Tal turned “angry” as she remained sober through the second day, telling her, “I thought I invited fun girls,” Miller testified.

She testified that Tal raped her in the shower the next morning as she cried and struggled to scream.

Tal alone is charged with this count.

Count five: sex trafficking a minor

This final sex-trafficking count concerns Isa Brooks.

The Netherlands native testified she was 16 when she and a dormmate skipped their high school prom to accept a party promoter’s invite to the brothers’ Southampton mansion in 2009.

“I always heard it was, like, the place to be on Memorial Day weekend,” she said of the Hamptons.

She told the jury that during a party hours later, after drinking tequila in the backyard hot tub, “I was feeling woozy, kind of spinny.”

Brooks said she stumbled to a bedroom, where Tal began kissing her, and told her “his brother was going to join us.”

Brooks told the jury that she fell in and out of consciousness, and remembered “in flashes” being raped by Tal, Alon — the “more shy” twin — and two other men, including the one who’d given her tequila in the hot tub.

“I was wondering why they hated me,” she told the jury.

Tal and Alon are charged with this count.

Count six: inducing Bela Koval to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity

This count concerns Bela Koval, the woman who testified she was raped by Oren after being invited to Sag Harbor in 2016.

It alleges that the three brothers caused Koval to travel across state lines, from Chicago to New York, so that she could be forced or coerced into “unlawful sexual activity,” meaning her alleged rape by Oren Alexander.

Prosecutors sought to prove this count by showing jurors communications among the brothers, including a text chain in which they mentioned Koval and her girlfriend, and joked about trying to “orgy them out.” All three brothers are charged with this count.

Count seven: inducing Maya Miller to travel to engage in unlawful sexual activity

This count concerns Maya Miller, the woman who testified she was raped by Tal in the shower of a Sag Harbor mansion in 2014.

Tal alone is charged with this count.

Count eight: aggravated sexual abuse by force or intoxicant

This count alleges that Alon and his twin Oren sexually abused a heavily-drugged Rhonda Stone in the cabin of a Norwegian Sky cruise ship in 2012.

Stone testified she was 23 years old when she and her older sister went on a so-called “Groove Cruise” — a three-day trip to Miami and the Bahamas featuring round-the-clock live music and DJs.

She said she lost consciousness after drinking a mixed drink handed to her by one of the brothers, and woke up “naked in the bed,” and unable to move or speak as the two took turns raping her.

Alon and Oren Alexander are charged with this count.

Count nine: sexual abuse of a physically incapacitated person

This count offers an alternate theory of sexual abuse and also concerns Rhonda Stone and the 2012 cruise trip.

To convict, the jury must find that Stone was “physically incapable of declining participation” in a sexual act.

Alon and Oren are charged with this count.

Count 10: sexual exploitation of a minor

This count concerns Amelia Rosen, who prosecutors allege was 17 years old and incapacitated when she was videotaped having sex with Oren and a second man in a Manhattan apartment in 2009.

Jurors appeared visibly upset when the video was shown to them in court. Prosecutors said it shows Rosen slurring her words and barely able to stand.

“I can hardly understand what I was saying,” Rosen testified tearfully when shown snippets of the video in court.

Oren alone is charged with this count.