LA prosecutor opens case against fashion designer
Greg RislingFashion designer Anand Jon Alexander ditched his profession and turned into a serial predator, hunting for girls and young women to have humiliating and painful sex with him, a prosecutor said Friday during opening statements of his trial.
Prosecutor Frances Young told the jury that Alexander was excited by luring aspiring fashion models to his Beverly Hills apartment and then forcing them to perform oral sex, inappropriately touching them or raping them.
Young said the 34-year-old designer kept a "conquest list" in which he noted some of his encounters with the girls and women, abbreviating the explicit sexual acts.
"He talks about violently having sex with underage girls," Young said.
"These things are windows into his soul and what excites him," the prosecutor said.
Alexander is accused of meeting women on the Internet and assaulting them when they visited California seeking modeling opportunities between 2001 and 2007.
Before opening statements, prosecutors dropped four more counts that had been pending against Alexander. He now faces 25 counts including forcible rape and committing lewd acts on a child. The nine alleged victims were 14 to 21 years old. Last month, prosecutors dropped more than half the original charges.
He has pleaded not guilty. He could face life in prison if convicted.
The investigation began last year when a woman claimed she had been sexually assaulted at Alexander's apartment. He was jailed in June 2007 and has remained behind bars.
Prosecutors played two videos allegedly taken by Alexander in which he directs two girls to show their bodies to him. In one, a 17-year-old girl disrobed. Young said the fashion designer then began touching the girl.
"She will tell you this was the worst experience of her life," Young said.
Alexander, wearing a dark suit and his jet black hair in a ponytail, smiled in the direction of his sister as he entered the courtroom. Defense attorneys were expected to give their opening statements later Friday.
Alexander also is under indictment in New York on similar charges involving nine women and is under investigation by authorities in Texas and Massachusetts.
Born in India, Alexander graduated from the Parsons School of Design in New York and launched a fashion line in 1999. He was considered an up-and-coming designer and was named a person to watch by Newsweek.