Testimony begins in New York federal sex trafficking trial
The first witness in the sex trafficking trial of Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander testified Tuesday that a party night associated with actor Zac Efron turned into a sexual assault in which she said Alon Alexander repeatedly raped her. She told jurors that, after attending a celebration at Efron’s New York apartment and later ending up in another apartment, she tried to get up and resisted sex but was overpowered.
The woman, who testified under a pseudonym, told the jury that she was 20 and an anthropology major in college when she met two of the brothers at the party tied to the final game of the 2012 NBA Finals. She said she accompanied a friend who had recently met Tal Alexander and who invited her to Efron’s apartment to watch the game, and she described limited interaction with Efron, who is not accused of wrongdoing in the case. She testified that she later went to an afterparty at a Manhattan nightclub, where she said she was given a drink and remembered little afterward until she woke up naked on a bed in another apartment with Alon Alexander.
According to her testimony, Alon Alexander was standing over her, and she said she repeatedly tried to get up while he kept pushing her back. She told jurors she said: “I don’t want to have sex with you.” She said Alon Alexander responded, “Haha, you already did,” and laughed at her.
The witness told the jury that Tal Alexander briefly walked into the room while the assault was occurring but did nothing to stop it. She described Tal Alexander as “super nonchalant” and said she remained in a defensive posture before fleeing after Alon Alexander fell asleep. She said she later reached out years afterward to friends she had told about the experience so she could be reminded that others loved her, and she became choked up and cried at multiple points during her account.
In her opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Madison Smyser told the jury that the Alexander brothers “masqueraded as party boys when really they were predators.” Smyser said they used “whatever means necessary” — including luxury accommodations, flights, drugs, alcohol and sometimes brute force — to lure women into situations where they could be raped.
Defense attorneys for the brothers pushed back on the account. Attorney Teny Geragos, representing Oren Alexander, urged jurors to reject prosecutors’ “monstrous story,” and Attorney Deanna Paul, representing Tal Alexander, warned that the trial’s subject matter would be disturbing and would seem like an R-rated movie after prosecutors portrayed the brothers as “monsters.” Paul also told jurors they should reject the criminal charges if they concluded that the accusers’ testimony was unreliable.
Paul told the jury that in their early 20s, Tal and his brothers were party boys, saying they were womanizers who slept with many, many women, and she urged the jury to disregard the prosecution’s framing. Geragos argued that prosecutors’ characterization of the witnesses was inconsistent with the defense view that the sex was consensual, and he pressed the idea that some of the accusers were hoping to enrich themselves with lawsuits and presented themselves as victims only after feeling regret about using illegal drugs or having sex outside of relationships.
Prosecutors say the brothers — two of whom were high-end real estate brokers — teamed up to drug and rape women and girls over several years, and they allege that they used their ties to the wealthy and famous to lure victims. An indictment alleges the men conspired to entice women to join them at vacation destinations such as New York’s Hamptons by providing flights and luxury hotel rooms. The brothers have been held without bail since their December 2024 arrest in Miami, where they lived.