Dear reader,
Today began the third week of the Alexander brothers’ federal sex trafficking trial.
We heard from Maylen Gehret, a woman who said Alon Alexander drugged and raped her in Aspen, Colorado, when she was 17 years old. Gehret, who is also suing Alon and Oren, broke down in tears as she told the story of her alleged assault. She said she was at the now-shuttered Bootsy Bellows club when Alon spotted her and invited her and her two friends over to their table. That’s where she said Alon, who gave her a vodka cranberry drink, flirted with her while Oren talked to one of her friends. Gehret said she drank two drinks that were handed to her before her head began to feel “really heavy” and she could “barely hold it up.”
The twins invited them to what they described as an afterparty, but took the girls to an empty hotel room with two beds. Alon invited her to lay down next to him on one of the beds. Gehret said her body “felt like it wasn’t there.” Through gasps and tears, she described her memory of Alon putting his hand in her jeans and later raping her in the bathroom.
“He started shoving his fingers inside of me really fast and hard,” Gehret said, causing her to bleed on the bathroom floor. “It really hurt, and I was so scared. I was so scared.”
When she exited the bathroom with Alon, she saw Oren on top of her friend, Gehret said. Alon moved on to her second friend, who Gehret said “wasn’t moving” as Alon stuck his fingers down the friend’s pants.
Eventually, Alon said that Gehret could leave if she handed him her phone. That’s when he, using Gehret’s phone, followed himself on Instagram and sent a message to himself that said “hey babe,” according to Gehret.
Gehret said she had never physically felt the way she had on the night of her assault until later that year, when she was prescribed Xanax ahead of a medical procedure. She did not tell her two friends she had been raped.
In her lawsuit filed on Dec. 30, 2024, Gehret said she was seeking a jury trial and compensatory damages. When a prosecutor asked her on Monday whether receiving a monetary award would affect her life, Gehret said:
“I really hope I don’t sound like a jerk, but the truth is, it would not impact my life because my father is a billionaire. I don’t need their money. I just don’t want them to have it.”
— Katherine Kallergis and Sheridan Wall
What we’re watching
One of Gehret’s friends who joined her on the Aspen trip, also known as “Minor Victim 25,” is expected to testify tomorrow under a pseudonym. Another of Gehret’s childhood friends is also likely to take the stand as an outcry witness, following testimony from Gehret’s brother, Augustus, who said Gehret told him she was raped in 2017.
Prosecutors also said they planned to call a woman known as “Victim 1” as a witness tomorrow to testify about an alleged rape by Tal Alexander in the Hamptons in May 2011. Her account forms the basis of the second count in the indictment.
Catch up on last week
The Alexanders’ defense team turned up the heat last week in the brothers’ federal sex trafficking trial.
More than 10 witnesses testified in a downtown Manhattan courtroom in the second week of the proceedings, including federal agents, a medical toxicologist and two women who alleged they were drugged and raped by one or more of the brothers.
Prosecutors also showed emails, texts and social media messages between the Alexanders and other men discussing securing drugs such as MDMA, Ambien and GHB ahead of trips. The exchanges get at the government’s claims that the brothers worked together to entice women to travel and to drug and rape them once they arrived.
As prosecutors work to establish their allegations, the defense looked to downplay the interactions as hookups gone wrong and highlight discrepancies in the women’s accounts of the alleged attacks
Read the full story online.