commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Many people find December-May intimate relationships to be – shall we say – peculiar. Attractive young women who marry ancient rich guys often get raked over the coals for being avaricious and any guy with a sweetheart half his age is going to get some peculiar looks and be labeled a DOM.
Nevertheless, large numbers of very old men plot and plan to get their weathered hands on young women (or men). And now that we live in the cyber-world, there are websites that make it easy for the old geezers to hook up with the younger set.
One of these “sugar daddy” sites is called SeekingArrangement.com. It bills itself as a place “where beautiful, successful people fuel mutually beneficial relationships,” according to the New York Times.
Well, it seems that an old dude named Paul Aronson decided to try his luck on SeekingArrangement.com and quickly met a 17-year-old girl named Shaina Foster. 17 is the age of consent in New York so there was nothing illegal about the assignation. Paul and Shaina went out to dinner once and when Paul proposed a second dinner date, Shaina agreed, but this time she brought her twin sister Shalaine along.
Paul appeared to have plenty of class and he kindly took the twins to an expensive eatery in Midtown Manhattan. After they had dined in style, Paul invited the teens back to his 4-story brick townhouse on East 38th Street to have a drink.
James C. McKinley Jr writes for the New York Times:
He bought a bottle of raspberry-flavored rum from a liquor store on the way, a defense lawyer said. But instead of receiving caresses or whispered flirtations, Mr. Aronson ended up tied to a coffee table for 20 hours.
Prosecutors say the two girls bound him with zip ties, took $470 in cash from his wallet and went on a spending spree with his credit cards, buying makeup and clothes, while he lay helpless on his living room floor.
On the day before Thanksgiving, Shaina and Shalaine, looking very young and not terribly threatening, “pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to charges of kidnapping, burglary, larceny and related crimes.” Their respite from custody was short and after their hearing, Justice Michael J. Obus ordered them back to jail without bail. The burglary charge is serious and the kidnapping charge is even more serious, bringing a 15-year state prison sentence.
According to a criminal complaint, the two girls, working in combo on Oct 1, tied up the old guy. Shaina Foster bound his legs to a coffee table, while Shalaine Foster tied his hands behind his back. They then went through his pockets at around 8:15 p.m.
At some point, Paul collapsed onto the floor and was still lying there when a neighbor found him the next day and untied him.
It’s not clear when Paul reported the assault and robbery, but Shaina and Shalaine were arrested on Oct. 21.
When interviewed at the station, Shaina expressed surprise, even shock, over the fact Aronson, who formerly was part owner of a business in the garment district, had turned them in. It’s well-known among hustlers of every ilk that dudes who are looking for various types of illicit sex are very wary of reporting a snafu when something goes wrong for fear of public humiliation. Paul must have figured, however, that since the girls were of age, and considering there’s no clear evidence that he assaulted them, they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if reported. And it appears he may be right.
Nonetheless, during the arrest proceedings, Shaina managed to speak her mind:
“He asked to do things I wasn’t going to do,” she told Detective Darryl Ng at the 17th Precinct. “He is ugly, old and disgusting. I tied him up. I took his money and left. He was starting to creep me out.”
Shalaine’s lawyer, Brian Kennedy, quickly moved to distinguish his apparently less culpable client from Shaina stating that his client only watched during the robbery. “She got caught up in something not of her making.” (This appears to overlook the fact that Shalaine allegedly tied Paul’s hands behind his back.)
It should be stated that Paul did apparently observe the niceties before getting down to the nitty-gritty. Not only did he take the twins out to dinner, but he also gave them a tour of his townhouse and let them play with his Yorkshire terrier named Muffins. It was only after these preliminaries were out the way that he poured them glasses of Bacardi and asked them to talk about their sex lives.
“Both girls were taken aback by that,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Kennedy also said that Paul “tried to grab one of the sisters when they initially started to leave his house, which precipitated the robbery. “This was an older man who was trolling these websites,” he said. “He was trolling for young girls.”
Now let’s think about this for a minute. Although Shaina confessed at her arrest, in the event she chooses to go to trial, I would think that Paul may be called upon to testify. Thus, he would experience a kind of public shaming in return for trying to help convict the girls. He would also probably undergo vigorous cross-examination designed to determine whether he really “tried to grab one of the sisters,” which of course could be construed as an act of assault and battery on his part which could complicate things further.
What may happen is that in order to convict the girls without a trial, thus freeing Paul from having to testify, the girls may ultimately be offered a reasonably good deal…maybe… I would be interested to see what Rick Stack thinks about this possibility.
Shaina and Shalaine have hardly lived lives free from pain, which may explain why they were willing to hang out with the old guy in the first place. They had both lived in separate foster homes. The family dysfunction manifested clear as day on Oct. 25 when their mother, Liza Torres, “was arrested on the courthouse steps and charged with heroin possession after attending their initial arraignment.”
Putting this in context, it seems unlikely that Shaina was genuinely shocked when Paul suggested they “talk dirty.” The fact they brought zip ties to the crime scene (Shaina said for self-defense if necessary) suggests they were waiting for an excuse to “jack” the old guy, and as stated above, did not think he would turn them in.
So where does that leave them? Shaina and Shalaine will be lucky, I would think, to get out of this with sentences in the 3 to 5 year range. And that assumes that Paul won’t want to testify at trial and their lawyers are able to hammer out a fairly decent deal.
If there’s no deal on the table, however, and the sisters have to go to trial, all bets are off and they could be looking at a very long prison sentence, even if it’s proven that Paul tried to grab one of them before they got down to business.