Michael S. Jeffries, the former executive director of Abercrombie and Fitch, who was accused of directing an international ring of sex trafficking, was found not suitable to be judged because Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
In a three -page order, Judge Nusrat J. Choudhury of the Eastern District of New York, wrote that Mr. Jeffries was “suffering a mental or defect illness that makes it mentally incompetent.” Judge Choudhury also ordered Mr. Jeffries to be hospitalized for four months to observe what improves his condition.
The ruling followed a letter presented last month by Mr. Jeffries, Brian H. Bieber and Alek Ubieta. They wrote that, based on the independent evaluation of three doctors, Mr. Jeffries, 80, had severe dementia and Alzheimer’s dementia, which “ensures a continuous decrease with time.” The condition of Mr. Jeffries could not understand the positions he faced, they wrote their lawyers.
Mr. Jeffries was accused last October for charges that, from 2008 to 2015, the coercion of men in sex with him, using his position as executive director of the retail retail to models of sexual exploits that were motivated to advance their careers. He had declared himself innocent.
Working with his romantic partner, Matthew Smith, and a third person, James Jacobson, Mr. Jeffries attracted men to secret sexual parties with the possibility of receiving modeling work, federal prosecutors said. Mr. Smith and Mr. Jacobson have also been accused of sexual trafficking and, such as Mr. Jeffries, they declared themselves innocent.
According to prosecutors, the men that Mr. Jeffries and his co -elacusados coerced were not allowed to leave the sexual parties. In addition to being forced to have sex, they were made to consume alcohol, drugs and viagra. The charges echoed the claims made in a collective claim filed against Abercrombie in 2023 and reported in a BBC investigation.
The defendants “used their money and influence to take advantage of vulnerable men for their own sexual gratification,” said Breon Peace, the former US prosecutor of the East District, in a statement last October.
He thought that Mr. Jeffries was attributed to saving Abercombie from bankruptcy in the early 1990s, the company faced a variety of crisis under its administration, long before the criminal accusation last year.
When Mr. Jeffries left the company in 2014, the company faced a violent reaction about what many customers saw their hypersexualized images of young models, and had been supporting sliding sales.
In 2004, Abercrombie agreed to pay $ 40 million to resolve a collective claim that accused the company of favoring white employees about black, Hispanic and Asian workers. In 2012, he faced a lawsuit for age discrimination that stated that Abercrombie Jet Gulfstream employees had to respond to any of Mr. Jeffries’ requests with “without problem.”
