Judge: Marital bliss and claims of monogamy are no defense against rape conspiracy charges

NEW YORK (AP) — Getting married and allegedly embracing a monogamous lifestyle cannot prove the innocence of a man charged in a conspiracy with his two brothers — both luxury real estate brokers — to sexually assault dozens of women, a federal judge said Monday.

Judge Valerie E. Caproni rejected Alon Alexander’s request to dismiss one count of the indictment he faces and use his 2019 engagement and subsequent marriage as a defense at a trial scheduled to start next week in Manhattan with jury selection.

The three brothers — Alon, Oren and Tal Alexander — are jailed without bail after pleading not guilty to conspiracy and other charges alleging that they drugged and raped women.

Oren Alexander and Tal Alexander sold high-end properties in New York City, Miami and Los Angeles before the charges were filed alleging that they used their wealth and influence to attack women from 2002 to 2021.

Alon Alexander’s lawyers argued that getting engaged and married signaled his exit from the single life and amounted to a withdrawal from any alleged conspiracy.

Caproni said he “saw an opportunity to reach for the prize” and try to win an acquittal with the argument as she denied his request and said he is also precluded from introducing evidence of his engagement and marriage at the trial.

The judge wrote that proof of Alon Alexander’s engagement and marriage is irrelevant and amounted to hearsay that could not be introduced at trial, including photographs, social media posts and home videos of his engagement announcement, along with statements from his co-defendants and a rabbi.

In a footnote, Caproni wrote that Alon Alexander’s contention that his withdrawal from “the single life” meant he abandoned any conduct that could be part of the sex abuse conspiracy “fails to adequately grapple with the nuance of the Government’s allegations or the contours of a sex trafficking conspiracy more generally.”

She said participation in the criminal conspiracy was not “comparable or akin to participation in ‘the single life.’”

“There are plenty of single men who engage in sexual activity without trafficking, drugging, or raping women and girls,” the judge said. “By the same token, the inverse of the Government’s alleged conspiracy is not, for example, ‘the engaged life’ or ‘the married life.’”

Thus, she said, there is nothing about the “mere transition from ‘single’ to ‘engaged’ that clearly indicates that Defendant withdrew himself from the conspiracy, or that he would cease helping his brothers accomplish the goals of the conspiracy — even if his participation in the scheme no longer involved him having sex (consensual or otherwise) with women that were not his fiancee.”