An alleged rape victim took the stand Tuesday to recount a terrifying night she says ended in assault at the hands of a Santa Barbara attorney.
Jane Doe, a Connecticut woman who had traveled to California to visit a friend, testified during a preliminary hearing that Judge Stephen Foley found sufficient evidence to move forward. Andrew Alire, a former Santa Barbara County deputy public defender who now runs his own practice, was arrested in March 2025 and pleaded not guilty to felony charges of rape of a drugged victim and oral copulation by intoxication. He is scheduled to be re-arraigned next month on those charges plus an additional felony count of rape by force.
Doe told the court she connected with Alire through a meetup app on Jan. 14, making it clear she sought only a platonic connection. After she mentioned enjoying darts, they arranged to meet at the James Joyce bar downtown. “I was having fun,” she testified. After buying a drink and returning from the bathroom, her condition changed abruptly. “It just felt like a wave of being really tired, really fast,” she testified. “I couldn’t keep my balance. I just felt really not like myself.”
Surveillance footage showed her struggling to remain steady and pushing Alire’s hand off her shoulder. About an hour after arriving, she was seen resting her head on the bar. Doe said she gave Alire a friend’s address for an Uber, expecting to leave alone, but Alire joined her and suggested going to his house to play darts.
“I said over and over that I didn’t want to go home with him,” she testified about her alleged appeals to the Uber driver. “I started telling the driver that I didn’t want to go with the defendant, and asking if he could take me somewhere else.”
When they arrived, she begged the driver to let her stay in the car, but the driver told her to get out because he had another passenger to collect.
Inside the house, Alire guided her into a bedroom with a hand on her back and shoulder and encouraged her to lie on the bed, she testified. She remembered being fully dressed when he left the room. Her next memory was of Alire on top of her, with her jeans and underwear removed and her shirt and sweatshirt pushed up.
“I tried to sit up, and he kind of pushed me back down with his hands on my shoulders, and my neck and my arms,” Doe said. Asked to rate the force on a scale of one to 10, she gave it a seven. Photographs documenting injuries to her body were admitted into evidence.
Doe said she got dressed as soon as Alire left the room. “I was really tired, but felt scared and, like, a lot of adrenaline,” she testified. “I just wanted to leave.”
Alire insisted on driving her home, and she eventually agreed but gave a different address to protect where she was actually staying. During the ride, he repeatedly questioned her about her level of intoxication. “He kept asking me if I remembered how drunk I was and how embarrassing I was, and if I was embarrassed at the things that I had done,” she said. When he suggested seeing her again, she gave a noncommittal answer. “I just wanted to get out of the car,” she testified.
Back at her friend’s apartment, Doe showered five times before falling asleep. She described pain in her wrist and shoulders, soreness in her throat and genital area, and bleeding she noticed later that day. She arranged testing for sexually transmitted diseases and other preventive care, called a national sexual assault hotline, and was referred to Standing Together to End Sexual Assault, a Santa Barbara organization known as STESA. She subsequently reported the alleged assault to police and underwent a forensic sexual assault examination.
“I was really embarrassed,” she testified about coming forward. “I was worried about my name being public and my career.”
During cross-examination, Alire’s defense attorneys questioned Doe about when she first told investigators specific details, including her pleas to the Uber driver, being pulled from the car, and being pushed onto the bed. They also asked about her weight, drinking habits, and use of meetup apps. Doe acknowledged some details were absent from her initial police interviews, explaining that the first officer requested a broad account and detectives would ask more detailed questions later. Asked how her memory compared with when she first reported the incident, she described it as “better, much more sharp.”
Alire remains actively licensed to practice law, though his State Bar profile carries a consumer alert notifying the public of the criminal accusations. Separately, another woman previously told a local publication that she experienced memory loss and disorientation during an encounter with Alire that she considered inconsistent with how much alcohol she had consumed, recalling a sexual encounter but unable to remember its full extent.
Alire is scheduled to be re-arraigned next month.