A Yale University student is facing charges in New York after police said he sexually abused a woman on a Manhattan train last month.
New York City police said Ari Shtein, 18, is charged with aggravated sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child. A narrative provided by police did not specify the reason for the child endangerment charge. The New York Post reported the victim was accompanied by four children at the time of the alleged abuse.
Multiple outlets reported Shtein is a student at Yale. The university did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
The incident played out on the northbound R train around 3 p.m. June 28, according to a narrative provided by a police spokesperson.
Police said the 30-year-old victim was aboard the subway approaching the West 28 Street and Broadway station when an “unidentified individual sexually abused her.”
Police said the victim got off the train and was taken to a local hospital by medics. Her assailant remained on the train.
Shtein, a Washington, D.C., resident, subsequently was arrested Wednesday morning, according to the NYPD.
He is represented by Priya Chaudhry, a high-profile attorney who also represented the actor Jonathan Majors, director Paul Haggis and “Real Housewives” star Jen Shah.
“Every strap-hanger has encountered unhinged people on the subway. Unfortunately, when Ari visited our City, it was his turn,” Chaudhry said in a statement.
Chaudhry said Shtein “did not assault anyone” and was visiting bookstores with a friend when “his life was turned upside down by a woman who falsely accused him of a vile crime.”
“His reputation has been destroyed. Before a single piece of evidence has been made public, he has been labelled a creep and convicted in the court of public opinion,” she added.
Shtein previously was listed as the opinions editor on the masthead page of the Buckley Beacon, a student newspaper at Yale. His bio said he was a freshman at Saybrook College and originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
In an October op-ed critical of bureaucracy at Yale, Shtein decried sexual harassment training for incoming freshmen.
“If I remember correctly, during my group’s training, we: one, learned that sex harassment and assault are bad, and that we shouldn’t do them; two, learned that if you do get sex harassed or assaulted, you should tell a bureaucrat or a cop about it; and three, performed skits about these kinds of scenarios,” he wrote.
“Was there anyone in that room who planned to go around harassing and assaulting their classmates, without the understanding that it would be wrong to do so? What precisely could be gained by a 90-minute explication of that principle?” Shtein went on to write.
Chaudhry, Shtein’s lawyer, claimed that the allegation against him is “nonsense” and that the woman “would have had to have been wearing a swimsuit” for the abuse to have been possible physically.
She asked for witnesses to contact her firm.
This article originally published at Yale student accused of sexually abusing woman on NYC train.