A teenager arrested for sexually assaulting a young mom riding the subway with her children in a random attack is a Yale University student, the Daily News has learned.
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Michigan native Ari Shtein, 18, is accused of creeping up on the 30-year-old woman, her four young children in tow on a crowded subway car, and forcing two fingers inside her vagina about 3 p.m. June 28.
The young mom had nowhere to move during the disturbing assault, which was witnessed by all of her children, who are under 11, on the uptown R train approaching the W. 28th St. stop, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.
A police source said the woman told cops that Shtein “told her he was surprised when she reacted angrily to what he did.”
Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Ilona Coleman released Shtein without bail when he appeared for his arraignment on Wednesday, charged with first-degree sexual abuse, aggravated sexual abuse, forcible touching, endangering the welfare of a child and related offenses.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had requested he be held on $10,000 bond, citing Shtein’s incentive to flee and his out-of-state ties to Michigan, where he grew up, and Connecticut, where he attends the Ivy League university.
Shtein has retained celebrity defense attorney Priya Chaudhry as his lawyer. Chaudhry represented disgraced Hollywood actor Jonathan Majors in his Manhattan domestic violence case and film producer Paul Haggis in his civil rape case, both of which she lost.
In a statement, the attorney disparaged the young mother whom her client is accused of sexually assaulting and sought to portray him as the victim.
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“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. “Ari did not assault anyone. He 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,” she added. “Before a single piece of evidence has been made public, he has been labelled a creep and convicted in the court of public opinion. The allegation is nonsense. On the woman’s own version of events, she would have had to have been wearing a swimsuit for the alleged conduct to have been physically possible.”
The Ann Arbor man’s LinkedIn page says he started at Yale in August and is slated to graduate in 2029. He has a regular column in the Ivy League university’s Daily News that “mostly consists of the airing of grievances,” according to his about-the-author blurb.
His most recent piece for the student paper, which was published in May, criticized what he described as discriminatory hiring practices in academia biased against white men.
In another article the student published to Substack in January, on his account, “Mistakes Were Made,” Shtein lamented having to attend a workshop about bystander intervention in response to sexual violence.
“You might be wondering, why? What the hell is wrong with this guy? Why does he let himself get so worked up over a silly little Mandatory Bystander Intervention Training; it’s just an hour of nonsense — what’s an hour, in the grand scheme of things!” Shtein wrote.
“What hurts me is to be treated like an idiot. Like a moron. A retard. Like someone who needs to be told that he ought ‘be alert to things that make [him] feel uncomfortable.’ Like someone who needs a whole damn motherf—ing framework, an hourlong lesson and a pamphlet, to intuit the link between ‘a bad thing is happening’ and ‘I should intervene to stop the bad thing.’ I want just a modicum of respect. A damned iota.”
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Yale University representatives have not returned a request for comment.