Oren, Alon and Tal Alexander each got 30 years in prison in New York after their convictions in a sex trafficking case. The sentencing on Tuesday closed the latest major stage in the case, with a Manhattan hearing that brought victims face to face with the men they accused.
A dozen victims spoke at the sentencing hearing, including an unnamed woman who said, "I carry a quiet funeral in me for the person I might have become had this not happened to me." Another woman said, "Every second that Tal raped me in that shower felt like an eternity of terror."
Manhattan sentencing hearing
The hearing followed a five-week trial that heard accounts of years of sexual assaults in Miami, New York and other high-end locations, including the Hamptons, Aspen, Colorado and a Caribbean cruise. Several women used pseudonyms when they testified. One woman said she was raped by Tal Alexander in August 2014.
The brothers moved from Florida to New York in 2008. Oren and Tal Alexander later became star representatives at Douglas Elliman before forming their own brokerage, Official, while Alon Alexander ran the family’s private security company.
Prosecutors and lawyers
Prosecutors said the brothers used access to money and women to exploit victims and lure them to parties or luxury trips. In a sentencing submission, they wrote, "They acted to exert maximum domination over their victims" and said, "The defendants made no effort to have consensual sex with the victims; they did not want that."
Their lawyers described the brothers as "womanizers" and said they apologized that they were "insensitive toward the feelings of certain women at certain times." The clash over consent and coercion ran through the case, but Tuesday's sentences left all three brothers facing the same 30-year term.
New York prison terms
The conviction and sentencing now place the case in its punishment phase, with the court having imposed the maximum term now announced for each brother. For victims who spoke in Manhattan, the sentence offered a formal finding of guilt but not an answer to the question of how the court settled on 30 years for each man.
That unanswered part may matter most to readers watching the case now: the record shows the sentence, the testimony and the competing accounts, but not the court’s reasoning for the number itself.
