theguardian.com excerpt
Prosecutors have accused each of the three very powerful, very wealthy brothers of violent, forcible rape of at least 10 women each and in some cases of threatening them if they spoke of their experiences. The accomplished real estate moguls, according to prosecutors, took no chances when it came to their pursuit of sex, and worked together in a conspiracy to lure, incapacitate and attack women.
The Alexander brothers were extravagantly celebrated in Jewish and Israeli media ...... laded for being “model citizens” and Israeli success stories.
The civil case against Oren and his twin began in March 2024 when they were sued by Kate Whiteman, a woman who said she had met at a Manhattan nightclub in 2012. She claimed they had forced her into an SUV as she was leaving and drove her to the Hamptons, where she was assaulted at a party mansion called Sir Ivan’s Castle. A flood of similar allegations followed. But Whiteman is not in court to testify. It was reported last month that she was found dead near Sydney late last year. Authorities in New South Wales have said the circumstances of Whiteman’s death “were found to be non-suspicious”.
As the trial entered its third week, the court heard from Abusshan Bodjnoud, a woman who testified that she witnessed an unidentified woman being raped by Tal, 39, and one of the twins in the Hamptons in May 2009. Bodjnoud told jurors she was in the house when a party of men returned and she saw Tal “dragging” a woman who “was not walking on her own” to the pool. “Then the next thing I heard was a woman screaming and just asking people to stop,” she testified. She said she witnessed Tal and the twin “moaning” as they raped the woman in the hot tub. Bodjnoud, who said she was “terrified” to intervene, said she had written “rapist” and “you need to apologize” on the brothers’ door before she left the house but acknowledged she had not called 911 and was warned that the Alexander brothers “were very powerful”.
A day earlier, jurors were shown text exchanges the government says showed that the brothers coordinated to secure drugs – including ketamine, Xanax, Ambien and GHB – they allegedly used to incapacitate women lured with the promise of luxury travel and exclusive experiences. In one exchange from September 2011, Alon texted about an upcoming party, telling the recipient to “throw some panty dropper pills in the dishes sent to our table”. Attorneys for the defendants have described some of the references as “crude jokes”.
Maylen Gehret, who is suing Alon and Oren for sexual assault, told the court that Alon raped her in Aspen, Colorado, in 2017 when she was 17. She said she was at a club with two friends when Alon gave her a vodka cranberry. After a second drink, her head began to feel “really heavy” and she could “barely hold it up”. The twin then allegedly took the girls to an empty hotel room and raped her in the bathroom. “It really hurt, and I was so scared,” Gehret testified.
Outside the brothers’ trial, their father Shlomi Alexander, who emigrated from Israel to the US to start a successful security company before branching into Miami real estate, sprang to their defense, claiming a $35m effort was made to extort him.
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