She took the stand against the Alexander brothers. Victim shares her ordeal

Inside the bathroom on the 26th floor of a Manhattan federal courthouse, Lindsey Acree was throwing up into a gold trash can.

A defense attorney had just grilled her for an hour about her rape some 15 years ago. She ran to the bathroom during the lunch break, and then continued answering questions in front of a courtroom that included her abusers, their family, friends and an army of lawyers.

“This has been literally like the hardest thing ever,” Acree told the court.

On Monday, a 12-person jury in New York — half women and half men — found the three Alexander brothers, who grew up in Miami, guilty on all 10 counts of raping and sex trafficking women over nearly two decades.

Acree, 40, a Brooklyn-based art gallery owner, is Victim #1 in court records.

Tal Alexander, 39, who was convicted of sex trafficking Acree, and his twin brothers Oren and Alon, 38, are not all charged in every count, but each face up to life in prison. Their sentencing will be Aug. 6.

More than 70 women have come forward, according to federal prosecutors, “many of them, if not nearly all” with accusations of sexual abuse against at least one of the brothers.

For Acree and other survivors, some of whom say they have waited decades for the brothers to be brought to justice, the guilty verdict in the five-week trial in Manhattan federal court is almost hard to believe. Other high-profile sex offenders – Jeffrey Epstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs – have previously gotten off without significant jail time.

During breaks between her testimony and cross-examination on Feb 10, Acree was dry heaving in the witness room off to the side of the courtroom. Her attorney, Lillian Timmermann, made a make-shift pillow out of Acree’s jacket and fed her Sour Patch Kids as she lay in a fetal position on the floor, Acree told the Miami Herald.

Since news first broke in 2024 about sexual allegations against the Alexander brothers, who graduated from Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High near Aventura about 20 years ago, Acree has been speaking to her attorney, FBI agents, prosecutors – and, she told the Herald, her cats.

Stress of trial

For weeks, she was throwing up in her kitchen sink in the morning, making sure her young daughter didn’t see her. Then, she would braid her hair and get her ready for school.

“Mommy is trying to fight some bad guys,” she would tell her daughter, to explain her absence.

The stress the trial has caused has been visible. Her clothes don’t fit. She used to like it when people told her she looked skinny, but this was a “sad skinny,” she said.

Just a day after the verdict was delivered, she found some peace.

“I jumped right back into my gallery,” she said in a text message to a Herald reporter. “Just met with an incredible photographer I represent from Ireland. Ate a full bowl of pasta and bread and honestly feel alive again.”

Hamptons assault

When asked by prosecutors what happened in the Hamptons on Memorial Day weekend in 2011, Acree had a straight-forward answer:

“I was raped by two men,” she testified, according to the trial transcript.

As to her overall memory regarding that weekend, Acree, who was 25 at the time, described it as a flip book with pages missing from it.

She had been invited by a friend to go to her “friends from Miami’s house” in the Hamptons for the weekend, she testified. Tal and another man picked the two women up at the East Hampton train station. When they got to the house, they changed and went into the hot tub.

She remembers taking a couple of sips, or maybe half of a glass of wine, while in the hot tub with Tal.

“I have memories that are sharp, and then I don’t know how much period of time was gone, like, and then I don’t know, I don’t know how much time passes,” she testified.

After the drink – which she thinks was drugged – she remembers following Tal into a sauna where she thought he was going to kiss her. Instead, he grabbed her by the back of the neck and pinned her against the bench.

From there her memory is hazy, with gaps. But she testified she does remember another man walking into the sauna, according to the transcript.

Eventually, the two men led her into a gym at the house. She remembers Tal setting up a tripod and then being raped by both men at the same time, she testified.

She remembers them both “laughing like it was a game,” she testified.

The next thing she remembers is waking up in a lawn chair by the pool in the backyard. The men made fun of her, she said, telling her that she “had quite the night” and had “to leave the house.” It was “humiliating,” she testified.

Deanna Paul, Tal’s defense attorney, questioned her for about three hours during the trial.

She asked Acree to read an email aloud she sent her mom after the weekend, where she wrote, in part: “The Hamptons was a little crazy. My friend Hana and I went and stayed at these guys from Miami’s house who ended up being total assholes. It was a good time, though. Just learned that it doesn’t matter where you are or how glamorous the place is. If you’re with creeps, it isn’t fun.”

Paul tried to poke holes in Acree’s story – noting she said she had a “good time” in her email to her mother – but it wasn’t enough to sway the jury that found Tal Alexander guilty of sex trafficking Acree.

Incident with Oren; his team disputes it

Before the Memorial Day assault, Acree alleges she was raped by Oren Alexander, Tal’s younger brother, in his New York apartment, according to her civil lawsuit against him, Tal and two other defendants.

Acree met Oren at a nightclub sometime in 2011. They had mutual social circles, and he had friended her on Facebook in April that year, according to her suit. Later that spring, she ran into him again at another club in New York.

That night, Oren invited her to an “afterparty” at his Manhattan apartment, according to her lawsuit, but no one else was there. Acree, in the suit, alleges he raped her and she ran out, leaving behind her phone.

When she went to the Hamptons for the Memorial Day weekend that same year, she testified she didn’t know Tal would be there and she did not know at the time that Tal was Oren’s older brother. As they were driving from the train station to the Hamptons home, she said, the other man in the car mentioned Oren’s name. When she asked if they knew Oren Alexander, Tal answered that he did not, she testified.

Acree didn’t file a police report and Oren was not charged criminally. In Miami-Dade, Oren is facing three sexual battery charges related to women he is accused of raping. (Alon is facing one sexual-battery charge with Oren stemming from an alleged assault at Alon’s Miami Beach condo on New Year’s Eve in 2016.)

“Mr. [Oren] Alexander has consistently maintained that Ms Acree’s allegations in the civil complaint describe events that he strongly disputes,” Juda Engelmayer, a spokesperson for the brothers said in a statement Friday. “These claims involve events alleged to have occurred more than a decade ago, and the facts surrounding them will ultimately be addressed through the legal process. Mr. Alexander looks forward to the opportunity to respond fully in court.”

Judge Valerie Caproni had ruled prior to Acree’s testimony in the federal sex-trafficking case that the incident with Oren would not be allowed to be discussed as part of the trial.

During her cross-examination, Paul, Tal’s attorney, asked Acree questions about having met Oren at a club, going to his apartment at a later date, whether she had seen pictures of family there, if she could describe his bedroom, whether they exchanged numbers that night.

Some of her questions were followed by sustained objections.

“The trial transcript speaks for itself,” Paul said in a statement to the Herald. “My questions were fully consistent with the Court’s rulings, and cross-examination conducted within those rulings is the basic function of a criminal trial.”

Acree later told the Herald she was frustrated to not be able to say in court what had happened to her.

“Defense counsel started asking me really detailed questions about it, implying through her questions I’d had a consensual sexual relationship with Oren, but I wasn’t allowed to say what he’d done to me,” she said.

She said she felt “muzzled and powerless.”

After the verdict

After Monday’s guilty verdict in the sex-trafficking case, Timmermann and Acree met up in the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel near the courthouse, where they both were staying during the trial.

Previously, Acree told the Herald she wasn’t suing the brothers to get money from them, but to take a stand with the other women. She was moved to do so after she read that Howard Srebnick, Alon’s defense lawyer, told reporters outside a federal bond hearing in January 2025 that the women filing lawsuits were trying to “profiteer from any sexual activity they had many years ago.”

“Fortunately, I’m in a position where I will never need money from anyone, certainly not theirs,” she told the Herald last May.

Acree and Timmerman met in October 2024, right before Acree was set to meet with the FBI – two months before the brothers’ arrests in December 2024 in Miami Beach. Acree said Timmerman gave her the confidence and courage to speak with the FBI.

She had spoken to other lawyers before, but none she’d felt comfortable with until she met Timmermann, whom Acree calls a “warrior for women.”

“None of this would have happened without her,” Acree said in an interview with the Herald this week.

Despite the stress and anxiety caused by the ordeal, Acree hopes other women will be inspired by the verdict, believe in the process, and continue to come forward.

“Our justice system is working, and you don’t need to be afraid,” she said. “Anyone in your life that would judge you for coming forward should not be in your life. It’s not something to be ashamed of, you did nothing wrong.”

While the federal trial is over, Acree and Timmermann still have work ahead. The civil lawsuit is ongoing, and Acree is hoping to set up a foundation to help other victims.

After taking a call from Timmermann Wednesday night, Acree put her daughter to bed.

“Mommy, I never asked you to fight the bad guys,” her daughter said to her that night. “I just want you to be here.”

Every day, she leaves notes and drawings on napkins in her daughter’s snack box for school. One of them, which she shared with the Herald, had a story about a mom and daughter who were super heros, fighting bad guys and winning.

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