The first accuser to testify in the sex-trafficking trial of ex-luxury real estate brokers Tal and Oren Alexander and their brother deftly rebuffed questions involving actor Zac Efron and her own blurry memory on Wednesday.
The woman, testifying under the pseudonym “Katie Moore,” was an early and key government witness in the Manhattan federal trial of Tal, Oren, and Oren’s twin, Alon Alexander.
She has testified that she was drugged and raped by Alon Alexander in 2012, when she was 20 years old, at his Manhattan apartment after they attended an NBA Finals viewing party at Efron’s nearby penthouse.
Prosecutors have alleged in an indictment that the Alexanders sometimes planned out sexual assaults, using their wealth to entice victims with the promises of luxury experiences, travel, and accommodations. The brothers have vehemently denied the charges against them, arguing that any sexual encounters were consensual.
A defense lawyer for Alon Alexander pressed Moore on cross-examination on Wednesday about why she would change her profile picture on Facebook hours after the alleged rape. The photo, which Moore said Efron shot, showed her smiling at the actor’s party.
“You took the time to change your Facebook profile?” asked Alon Alexander’s attorney, Howard M. Srebnick, during a second day of cross-examination for Moore.
“The only thing I could think of was it was to distract myself at that moment,” Moore told the six-man, six-woman jury. “Just trying to keep normalcy at a moment in my life when nothing was normal.”
Efron’s name came up multiple times during Moore’s testimony. At one point, Moore described herself as a “fan” of his and said she was excited to meet him. Efron has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Representatives for the actor did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.
Moore testified Tuesday that after the party and a visit to a nearby club with Efron and the brothers on that 2012 evening, she had awakened from being drugged to find herself naked on Alon Alexander’s bed in the Manhattan apartment where Tal Alexander also lived. Alon Alexander, who was an executive at his family’s private security firm, was standing over her and was also naked, she said.
“I was shocked, and I had no idea how I got there,” Moore testified, adding that she tried two or three times to get out of the bed, but “Alon kept pushing me back down.”
Tal Alexander, she said, walked in on the alleged attack, and the brothers “casually” chatted.
On Wednesday, Tal Alexander’s defense lawyer, Alex Kahn, questioned Moore about how long his client remained in the room during the alleged rape.
“Was he there for a moment?” Kahn asked the accuser. “What do you mean by a moment?” she answered, her voice firm.
“A very short time,” Tal Alexander’s lawyer responded. “What do you mean by a very short time?” she asked.
The defense lawyer reframed his question, asking how long she believed his client was present in the bedroom.
“I could not quantify,” Moore answered. “Because I was being raped at that moment.”
Asked on Tuesday why Moore waited until 2024 to contact law enforcement — another potential weak point in the prosecution case — she said she realized that the case had become “bigger than me.”
The brothers, she said, had “harmed people, including my 20-year-old self — the version of me that couldn’t do anything and that felt too scared and helpless to do anything.”
Moore took the witness stand on Tuesday shortly after opening arguments kicked off in the high-profile trial.
During those opening statements, Assistant US Attorney Madison Reddick Smyser told the jury that the Alexander brothers are sexual predators who together raped dozens of women and girls and then “celebrated their crimes.”
The brothers “used whatever means necessary” to carry out the attacks over the course of more than a decade, the prosecutor said.
Later on Wednesday, a second accuser took the stand to describe a harrowing 2014 rape in the shower of a Hamptons vacation home.
“Is this how you thank me for inviting you to a beautiful home,” a nurse from Nevada said Tal Alexander angrily told her before his alleged attack.
“As he was cleaning himself off, he looked at me and said, ‘you wanted that,'” the woman, then a 24-year-old aspiring model, told the jury. Her testimony is scheduled to continue on Thursday.
The Alexanders face several federal sex trafficking charges. If convicted at trial, Tal Alexander, 39, and the twins, 38, could face up to life behind bars.
