It’s not clear when Shannon Orand—a mother of two from Houston—began having an alleged sexual relationship with Leib Tropper, the ultra-Orthodox rabbi from the upstate New York enclave of Monsey who was helping her work toward her conversion to Judaism. But last year, when the rabbi encouraged her to engage in phone sex with other men in exchange for money, she says, she began recording their conversations. In an interview last month with Failed Messiah blogger Shmarya Rosenberg, Orand said she made the recordings for her own protection, to ensure that other rabbis would believe her allegations against Tropper. But the audio files, perhaps inevitably, began circulating around ultra-Orthodox samizdat networks and eventually surfaced on blogs and on YouTube, where the audio was set to a photograph of the rabbi. (Tropper’s lawyer, Howard Karasik, told Tablet Magazine his client would have no further comment on the tapes beyond a statement issued in December, in which Tropper expressed his regret “for what has appeared to be conduct not within our significant laws of modesty” without denying their legitimacy.)
Tablet Magazine obtained several of these recordings. Two of the conversations feature negotiations between Orand and the man she says is Tropper about the circumstances under which she might agree to meet with other men he knew. Another involves explicit phone sex between the two—smut that prompted Tropper’s incensed enemies to paste handbills around Jerusalem and in the Israeli ultra-Orthodox town of Bnei Brak, calling on the rabbi to “cease from this filth.” They were signed, anonymously, “Shocked sons of Torah.”
Here are transcripts of four telephone conversations. They are explicit. We offer them not as an exercise in prurience but rather to reveal—in their entirety—the nature of these very serious charges. The first is between Orand and the man she says is Tropper, in which they appear to negotiate a deal for sex. In the second, the male caller complains to Orand that she is sending mixed messages about whether she is interested in sex with him or only doing it for money. In the third, the man has phone sex with Orand. And in the final call, a woman who identifies herself as Leba, which is the name of Tropper’s wife, has a discussion with Orand about a secretly recorded video she has seen.
But first, some clips from the recordings.
In a clip from the first conversation, a man is attempting to coerce Orand into trying phone sex with other men, wheedling with her to “try this one thing”—the sex. She demurs, asking whether everything can “remain the same” in her relationship with the rabbi and his wife:
In another conversation, the man and Orand engaged in phone sex:
In that same phone-sex conversation, as the man approaches climax, he asks Orand to describe a specific sexual encounter:
***
THE DEAL
MALE VOICE: So anyway, so yeah, I’m saying it’s best for all practical purposes if I know where finally you stand, darling. And you know, whatever, if it’s no, yeah, if we have some relationship with you on some level, we’ll be friends and [inaudible]. I just got to somehow, you can tell, I can tell—
ORAND: I keep telling you, I keep telling you and you keep avoiding—
MALE VOICE: What? Maybe I’m not hearing you well, don’t scream at me—
ORAND: You’re not listening to me, I want everything to be the same, the same as it used to be.
MALE VOICE: You want it to be the same, you want it to be.
ORAND: Yes, I just don’t want to do—
MALE VOICE: Oh, I thought you said you don’t wanna—OK fine! I understand that, I’m fine.
ORAND: Could I, could I, I can’t, I can’t sleep with these men, but—
MALE VOICE: I asked you, I asked you a question.
ORAND: I know!
MALE VOICE: I didn’t tell you to, I didn’t tell you to—
ORAND: You asked if I could, if I could just call them on the phone and do like phone things and talk about—that I said no to. I didn’t say no, I said it’s hard, it’s not something I’m used to, you know if I have feelings for the person, then I can do, you know, sex things on the phone, but—
MALE VOICE: Right. Would you be willing to—
ORAND: It’s very difficult with somebody you don’t really—
MALE VOICE: OK, don’t worry, OK, I heard you loud and clear.
ORAND: The other man, I keep telling you, it was —
MALE VOICE: Whatever it is, I don’t want to get into a philosophical argument, it is what it is [inaudible].
ORAND: That’s it, that’s what I’m uncomfortable with and I keep telling you that everything else I want to remain the same.
MALE VOICE: I didn’t hear you well, I’m sorry, I thought you said you don’t want to be like it was before, I thought you said, “don’t.”
ORAND: No, I do. I do.
MALE VOICE: OK, darling, fine, OK fine.
ORAND: And Leba is fine, I love that! It’s fine.
MALE VOICE: OK, fine, darling, it’s OK. I’m just saying, the only other thing I asked you for, to try [inaudible] Amir if that would be possible, I think that would be possible—I don’t even know if you’re going to meet him, how often that will happen, will it ever happen.
ORAND: Well it certainly is not going to happen around the wedding, ’cause there’s too much going on.
MALE VOICE: Well yeah, right, exactly, I’m too busy, I’m too busy, not going to happen this time for sure, there’s no question, in my bed. It can’t happen. I mean it finishes Tuesday, then Wednesday, and then Thursday, not going to happen, and you’re leaving early morning so—not going to happen on this trip. But in general—theoretically speaking, do you think you could say, “Well, it’s one thing, I’ll try this one thing?” I’m not going to go ask you to do anything else, you know, with them, you know, if you don’t want to do that.
ORAND: Right, well yeah, that’s—
MALE VOICE: OK. OK fine! End of story. You don’t even—that’s very nice of you. I’m appreciative, thank you very much, you said that, that’s all.
ORAND: I want everything else with us to remain the same.
MALE VOICE: OK, great! Darling, you do want to feel the same feelings, you do want to feel loved [inaudible], right?
ORAND: Yes, I want it to be the same.
MALE VOICE: OK darling, great! Great! I’m so happy. I’m ready right now. I’m ready to squeeze you, squeeze you so hard—(laughs)
ORAND: You are crazy.
MALE VOICE: Am I crazy?! I am! Crazy about who? About who?
ORAND: About—that.
MALE VOICE: Tell me! Crazy about who?
ORAND: That fat ugly blond chick in Houston
MALE VOICE: That’s right! The short fat lady with the mustache. The short fat lady with the mustache. Exactly.
ORAND: Yes.
MALE VOICE: OK darling, you’re really great. Great great great great great. So, OK, so, I will be actually—so when I spoke to him before, he wasn’t sure, he wasn’t even sure he brought the money with him—he left a night early, on Saturday night, he caught an early flight, motzei Shabbos—but he thinks he’s pretty sure he has it, it’s very important, and he’s going to call you soon.
ORAND: How does somebody travel with $3,700 and they’re not sure they have it?
MALE VOICE: No, he wasn’t sure if he took it from his house, his mother’s house, he was here in Monsey for Shabbos, he took it out of his pocket before Shabbos, you understand?
ORAND: Right.
MALE VOICE: He put in the drawer, in the drawer, he wasn’t sure if he put it back in his pocket going on the plane, he ran out motzei Shabbos and—
ORAND: Maybe, maybe money is not that important to so many people, but if I had $3,700, anywhere, in a drawer, in a pocket..
MALE VOICE: No, but, in his parents’ house.
ORAND: —in a suitcase—I’d know exactly where it is
MALE VOICE: No, he knows where it is! He knows it’s either with him or he left it in the—in his drawer, in his room—don’t make an issue, it’s not a big deal, I’ll get it to you tomorrow, I could find a thousand people going to Texas and give it to you—but he’s pretty sure he has it, he’s pretty sure he has it.
ORAND: OK.
MALE VOICE: OK darling, so I’m going to, here’s what I want to do darling. I’m going to send you an email—delineating the things you are going to do, only the things you are going to do, because everything else you don’t do is not part of the agreement, not part of the agreement, I can’t expect you to, it’s not part of the agreement. I’m going to put it in. As you invest in it, darling, I promise you, you’ll get back a lot [inaudible] for it
ORAND: Why are you emailing me?
MALE VOICE: I won’t email you, I’m just telling it to you, darling, OK? I won’t email it to you, I’m telling it to you.
ORAND: Why—
MALE VOICE: OK, I won’t email it to you, I’m telling it to you.
ORAND: What, are you documenting stuff? What is going on?
MALE VOICE: Are you crazy? I would get rid of it. I don’t want people—I remember what I said to you.
ORAND: Yeah, but you just told me everything. Why would you want to document that kind of agreement on an email?
MALE VOICE: No I mean, you’re right, I shouldn’t do that, I just want, I want to have some kind of an understanding that we can refer to, that, you know, that it shouldn’t be a problem later on, you know, ‘I didn’t say that, I did say that.’ I want something that—you mark it down yourself.
ORAND: No, I thought you said I should delete every email you send me and I send you you delete it.
MALE VOICE: I do! I do! On the spot! I don’t have any emails, darling. Listen to me closely, listen to me closely.
ORAND: So what are you going to refer to in the future?
MALE VOICE: I said maybe you should write it down on your own piece of paper in your house and put it in your drawer, have what we made up on the phone, that’s all I’m saying to you, maybe you could do that. You’re right, for a moment I said email, but that’s stupid, it’s not good to have anything that we don’t need to have. But you should have in your drawer, I should have in my drawer, a piece of paper that I wrote down. I’m going to write down what I’m telling you on a piece of paper, I’m going to keep it in my drawer, I’ll read you what I wrote, so you can agree to it, that’s all. I’m not going to go email it to you, I’m not going to document it not on email, I’m not going to document it at all. I’ll write a piece of paper and put it in my drawer. My handwriting, my name, not your name, just me and myself.
ORAND: OK. I’m not signing anything. [Laughs.]
MALE VOICE: I’m not asking you to sign anything.
ORAND: No, you make it sound like so, so, like—
MALE VOICE: You’re so suspicious of every stupid thing in the world—you don’t trust—you don’t trust God!
ORAND: I have a very hard time—
MALE VOICE: I know! You have a very hard time trusting anybody.
ORAND: I do trust God—but that’s not you!
MALE VOICE: OK darling—well, you say you trust God, but trust that’s not tested is not trust. I don’t know what, you do trust God, you don’t trust God, it sounds to me you don’t trust anybody in the whole world. Untested trust is not trust. And if you have a friend who you can’t trust, like me, I would be more, I should be more worried about myself, I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to do that, because I don’t trust her, maybe she’ll tell somebody, maybe she’ll say something to somebody, you have told people things, you shouldn’t have told people things, people told me you told them things, and I know you do tell people things, and I don’t know what you’re going to share with this guy, that guy, Jack, or Jill, Michael, I don’t know what the hell you’re going to share with who, who knows what you’re going to share with every rabbi in Houston, Texas, I have no idea. So I should be suspicious, I should say I don’t trust her, I don’t trust her at all. But I’m not! I’m not that nature, and neither is my wife, unfortunately we’re not, we’re very much accepting of people, [she] doesn’t know what it means to lie, so she never suspects anyone of lying to her, that’s why she gets so messed up with things in her life. She gets messed up, she gets in trouble. Sexually, or physically—anything—she trusts people. It’s unfortunate, because she’s not [inaudible] herself. Tom doesn’t know how to lie, so he trusts Guma, but he can’t believe people lie: “Nobody would lie, who would lie?” So I’m stuck with that kind of attitude, but—it has to be mutual, you don’t trust me, I don’t trust you, you trust me, I do trust you, but if you can’t trust me, then you have an issue. You should go the therapist about your trust issues, darling.
ORAND: No, I trust you— but gosh, documenting things on email just seems like insane.
MALE VOICE: So I said to you, I made a mistake! Do I have to tell you a thousand times?
ORAND: But it goes totally, it goes totally against your whole “delete every email as it comes in.”
MALE VOICE: Exactly! That’s why it was a stupid thing for me to say. So, you know, calculators have a “cancel” button—press ‘cancel’, it’s over, it’s done, I press “Cancel,” I would never do it, stupidest thing for me to think of, because even though it’s an important document for me to have, to write it on an email is the worst thing because it could be hacked, it could be taken, it could be used. Terrible! It’s the worst thing in the world. So, I’m not doing that. Every email I get from you I delete immediately! Not just five minutes later, immediately, it’s deleted, it’s gone, it’s done with. So now, the only thing is I will make a document in my house, you don’t have to sign it because you don’t know, all of a sudden you decide you can’t do it anymore, if you can’t do it you can’t do it, I understand, fine. If it happens, whatever happens, but I just want to make sure that you understand that we have this arrangement, even how tentative it may be, it may be for a month, two months, five months, six months, maybe 10 months, maybe five years. But I’m just going to document you and I spoke on this day, this is what the result was, I’ll stick it somewhere in my drawer, and that’s it. I’m not going to give it to anybody, nobody’s going to see it, it won’t be hacked, it won’t be deleted, it won’t be publicized in Newsweek magazine. I’d be embarrassed to publicize it.
ORAND: No, so it will just be there for Pesach to find.
MALE VOICE: Excuse me, my son Pesach?
ORAND: Yeah, or the housekeeper, or the aide, or—
MALE VOICE: No, no. [Laughs.] Cutiepie, cutiepie, I have a private little chest, I lock my passport in it, I lock the most important documents of my life in there, like my—you know
ORAND: OK.
MALE VOICE: It’s not even a question. It’s not going to say your name. I’m going to put ‘R’, you know ‘R,’ which is Rochel—
ORAND: OK.
MALE VOICE: Anyway, that’s the bottom line, it’s not a big deal. I will do that and I appreciate everything very, very much. I’m going to go with you tonight, I will go with you tonight darling, and I’m yirtzeh hashem. [Inaudible] just called me, he hung up on me, I’m going to call him back. I didn’t tell, I spoke to [inaudible] yesterday, he wants to talk to you about it, he’s coming, he’s going [inaudible] call you today at two o’clock, you know area code 832?
ORAND: Yeah, so call him back.
MALE VOICE: I’ll call you back.
ORAND: OK, bye.
***
MIXED MESSAGES
MALE VOICE: Thank you for calling back, I appreciate it. OK so hello.
ORAND: I’m here.
MALE VOICE: I remember where we left off, we have to figure out again, there’s a couple things we have to figure out—the money I give you now for the lawyer I’m counting as an old past gift. The $1,700 that has been cashed, that’s the first of the payment of the $3,000, that is November, December, but I’m going to continue more than that. I have to give you another $1,300 in terms of November. I just got an email from Dr. White while I was driving—he told me you have the appointment [inaudible] like I told you—$1,000 when he visits on Tuesday [inaudible]—that’s some money—then there’s—
ORAND: Why so much?
MALE VOICE: It’s two treatments that he is giving you. $500 a piece.
ORAND: $600—
MALE VOICE: He told me its $500 per treatment.
ORAND: OK.
MALE VOICE: And then he said that also —um, you’ll need three more treatments at six weeks apart over 18 weeks. Each one is $300, which means beside the airfare and everything else that you’re going through, you have to have another $1,000. It’s probably closer to $6-700 per trip without sleeping any place, sleeping on the floor—you have to just figure out all the things with money. What was happening until now darling—your sweet little voice, which I love that so, so, so, much, even though it’s beyond anything I was usually giving for anything, I couldn’t turn you down because there was a real tight bond and emotional feeling and whatever glitch of tongue that I had and how you interpreted it and how maybe I should have been more clear about my—
ORAND: It’s still the same I just—
MALE VOICE: What?
ORAND: It’s still the same, that’s why I said I wanted it to go back to where it was, it’s still the same, I just can’t do those things that are outside.
MALE VOICE: Right, right, so the compromise on that is to [inaudible] —that doesn’t mean I wont take no for an answer, I’ll take no for an answer if you say no, the only compromise I want is, I want you to go back to [inaudible] and concentrate on what really happened. I understand you [inaudible]. I appreciate that, let’s say, let’s say the other guy, that Satmar guy—the moment you spoke to him and everything you said he’s not the guy—that should be your call—but what maybe you could do is if you say to somebody, “I’m not ready to do it right now but can we talk about sex”—do you have a problem with talking about sex to a guy or only actually doing it? Tell me the truth—you don’t have to hide anything—it’s you—you’re the person—
ORAND: I think you know talking is worse than doing—to me.
MALE VOICE: Really?
ORAND: I have a hard time —especially somebody that I don’t really care for or like, it’s very hard to get descriptive—
MALE VOICE: Right, OK. Kind of like playing on the phone with him not like doing anything, but if you say it’s not it’s not, that’s the end of the story.
ORAND: In a relationship it’s very easy to say.
MALE VOICE: I understand, I got you. Those things, I’m not making a condition upon it I just have to say I feel—if I’m hungry for something—it’s like somebody who is very hungry and doesn’t feel fulfilled—they’re eating food they are not eating food that they want or like—and that’s what it is like for me. I mean not all of them.
ORAND: I feel that was my problem because you’ve never expected that before I [inaudible] it, and now I can’t take it back.
MALE VOICE: You can take it back, you just have to do it.
ORAND: No, I can’t go back. Now I can’t go back to the way it was.
MALE VOICE: Well you can, you’re paranoid. I’m not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do. I’m not going to force you. You’re asking me how I feel about [inaudible]. I wish you would sometimes—not every person and not every one, you can tell me selectively who you feel more comfortable doing it with—the one I say to that I really would want, which is probably not going to happen to you anyway, would be Amir—anything were to happen—he is a very nice guy, he never hurt anybody and he doesn’t make you some kind of rough play—he is not nuts. [Inaudible.] Others, yeah, yeah, no, no, if you’re talking a guy on the phone and you feel [inaudible], it would make me feel good because I don’t know— but— I would take no as an answer, I would take no as an answer—and that’s without any question, I’ll take no as an answer. But if, everything that you do, and I do to—for—you, whatever it may be, whatever it may be, darling, hopefully the people’s hearts, and their appetite for the other person more and more. I don’t want you to feel that you have to do it—if you don’t want to do it you don’t have to do it. You own your body—I don’t own your body and that’s—your personality is very different than the women I’m usually used to in my life—if there are things you don’t want to do, don’t do, and that’s different. Now put that aside, if I may. The other thing is the reticence, the ambivalence—the only thing that would be a real deterrent is if I see a manifestation or actual expression of ambivalence I can’t go ahead with that. I can’t do it with you, darling. [Inaudible] as positive about it as I am, [inaudible] if you’re not there and you don’t want it—I don’t know if I can do it. I can’t go ahead with it, you know what I mean, if you feel sick.
ORAND: I know.
MALE VOICE: I have this conflicting feelings of loving you and my physical desire and I could role-play a rape with you but I couldn’t actually rape you—you know what I’m saying, darling—does that make sense?
ORAND: I understand.
MALE VOICE: So if I detect a kind of ambivalence from you—you’re not really into it, so I don’t think it’s worthwhile for either one of us to do that because it always creates negative—kind of a trail of negativity afterwards and it’s not something that you or I both want. If you don’t really love me, you don’t really care about me, and you’re doing because I have a [inaudible], I don’t wanna feel that either. I don’t wanna feel that I’m giving you money for something that you’re doing with any kind of detachment—I don’t want. You’ll be happily married with some person that you’ll love so much, like much more than me I promise you—you’re not gonna get addicted to me like I got addicted to you. You know the definition of the love in terms of the kind of person you can really love as a spouse at least and a spouse and you don’t have a problem the person you love, you’re gonna love the way you wanna love him.
ORAND: Well, the person I love, I don’t have any problem with anything, it’s not having that relationship.
MALE VOICE: Excuse me, say that again.
ORAND: I have no problem doing pretty much anything with the person I love.
MALE VOICE: Right, but I’m not that person and I don’t think I’m that person. I mean you know, so therefore it’s hard for me if I feel any ambivalence I just gotta stop it I can’t do it. I can’t go ahead with it. That’s my problem.
ORAND: When you’re in a secure relationship and you know that going to be forever and you know that’s your other half, there’s a lot more to it.
MALE VOICE: I’m not trying to change your opinion, I have a very different outlook on life, I don’t look at it that way. The Torah tells a person to love every person in the world. A person can love anybody and everybody if you want to, and if you’re able to. But I’m not here to argue with you, have a conversation, dialogue, philosophical—and make you change your emotional feeling—your structure emotionally is very different than mine [inaudible]. It’s not important. If we wanted to work out something, you wanted to work out something [inaudible], I wanted to work our something, then I can’t tell you think that the premise is gonna have to be a feeling between us, there’s no feeling between us. I trust your honesty [inaudible]. Last night I was davening—crying my heart out, I felt purged afterward, it’s the right thing, I’m not going to be with her she doesn’t want to be with me and I’m not—maybe best thing for both of us—we’ll be friends—we’ll email and talk and we’ll do things together, but she doesn’t love me—what’s the big deal? I cannot in a million years—I have the same feeling for you that I had before, nothing happened to me over Shabbos, darling. Nothing happened to me at all over the weekend. Something happened to you over the weekend, something happened to you after last weekend, and I had to leave it to somebody else, but whatever it is I believe that it took a 360-degree turn and I’m not comfortable with you being with someone to facilitate my needs. I won’t be able to do it, I won’t be able to. So if you can’t talk yourself back into the old [inaudible] and you were right not to, I’m not making judgment, but that’s an issue for me. Just as you have an issue with money for the exchange, I have the same thing with the exchange—I don’t want your feelings to be contingent upon the money. So how do we proceed from here?
ORAND: Are you asking me?
MALE VOICE: I’m asking you, I mean I get mixed messages from you darling, you do love me and you don’t love me and you do love me but you can’t love me but you wanna love me but you shouldn’t love me, and I’m sure that they are all [inaudible] you, all those feelings, you have all these feelings where you can and you can’t, you didn’t have that before and now you’re all mixed up about what you should and shouldn’t and can and can’t.
ORAND: This has been from the beginning you know.
MALE VOICE: I never heard this—
ORAND: You’re married, there is no way you could be with me at all even if you wanted to. It’s just not possible. That’s been since the beginning, hasn’t it?
MALE VOICE: But that doesn’t mean preclude the feeling of love that you had for me the whole time. You said to me this morning that you love me, and I said to you that I love you—I can’t figure this out—this temperamentalness, this untrustable emotional zigzag drives me very, very much into frustration. You know—
ORAND: Uh-huh
MALE VOICE: But if it’s not it’s not and that’s fine, and we can be friends without loving each other—I take the word very seriously, “loving.” It doesn’t mean to me that you have to marry the person. Grover Cleveland told a [inaudible] even if I was single I couldn’t marry you, darling, because we are very, very different people. I couldn’t live with a woman who in my perspective is an a feminine person—the assertiveness that you have, that you possess, is very, very difficult for me, and you know it, and I’ve told this to you a number of times—I can’t deal with aggressively assertive women, it’s not my—there are men who love to be eunuchs, but I can’t—that doesn’t mean I can’t love you, it doesn’t mean that. And this includes hope, longing, wishing there was a different—care for you, worry about you, making your concerns my concerns. That’s for me. You have a different interpretation of love [inaudible]. Your relationships with people in Houston, this was all pre-Tropper, that you are willing to be with them without loving them, and I’m not getting this—I’m so much in a turmoil about this—maybe you can help me understand this, then maybe I can resolve in my mind how to proceed from here—because as I stand right now, darling, I don’t have the same passionate urgency—[inaudible]. I have the same things about it, not about you but about it. I don’t want to be in a situation where I’m [inaudible]. I want you to enjoy something that comes from something, that’s what I want, and if you feel that it’s not going to happen—fine—I’ll give you two months’ money, I’m not going to hold back on that because you had to be involved with attorneys and everything else. [Inaudible.] I think you should be kissing everybody’s toes who’s giving you $10,000 a year and helping you with that. Not the money that I gave you in the past—an unbelievable thing I mean I was [inaudible] day and night, it was four or five times that I was with you alone, [inaudible] who supposedly you loved and who didn’t give a half, a fraction of the amount of money that Leib Tropper gave you, and yet you loved him for whatever it was [inaudible] you dedicated to him, you are heartbroken, you are destroyed, and even now you wish that he were different and you could go ahead with your relationship with him, married, not married, whatever will be. You didn’t think about the question of whether you can marry him—he told you from the beginning that he can’t marry you because he is a Cohen. I don’t know what’s going on, darling. I wanna truly understand you, because I do love you. I do. You may not, but I do. I understand you—you understand me?
ORAND: I do, I understand you.
MALE VOICE: No you’re saying you, not me.
ORAND: Understand me? No, I don’t understand me.
MALE VOICE: You tell me when you want to [inaudible] and I will be happy to try and accommodate some level of that. I told you how much I’m willing to do, I told you—not to prostitute yourself to anybody [inaudible]. Sometime Leba doesn’t want to sexually what I want to do but [inaudible] out of love, and she is so happy that I’m happy, she is so happy, she sees the difference, how much more relaxed I am. Last night was an example, I’m not going to go into details but I wanted a certain position that she wasn’t interested in. She said OK, of course, if it makes you feel better, if it will make you feel more relief afterwards, so we did it that way and this morning we went together into the city [inaudible] it was great—a bit of a tense moment and you know thanks to your, the situation with you, caused a lot of tension for me [inaudible] so she was very happy for me. I understand and that’s OK, you have your limits of what you can do and you can’t do, and that fine. But I can’t have a situation at all where kind of you know—and not happy and no feelings for me at all. I can’t—I can’t do it darling. I’m not a piggy bank.
ORAND: I understand.
MALE VOICE: OK, so tell me, give me a final response, how you feel and I’ll take it from here. You want to think about it? You wanna get back to me?
ORAND: I wish I could go back to the beginning, when there were less expectations, but can we talk about it later?
MALE VOICE: Whatever you want, but I’m not passing on any funds at this time until you tell me what you want me to do, OK, darling? I’ll do it as soon as you tell me [inaudible]. OK, darling?
ORAND: OK.
MALE VOICE: Thank you so, so, so, so, so much [inaudible]. I’ll wait for your call. All right?
ORAND: OK, bye.
MALE VOICE: Bye.
***
PHONE SEX
MALE VOICE: You have an empty house with nobody there?—don’t do it because of me, do what you wanna do, so either you—so, is that the story? Is that right, is that it? Whatever you do you do, you don’t have to report to me. [Inaudible.] Are you nervous about the upcoming whatever you call it?—on Friday? Are you still—? Sounds like a very good idea. Uh, what else. [Inaudible.] I was at my [inaudible] until three in the morning every night, people banging on my door—the couples and the women and the men—coming out of my nose. And I have to go to [inaudible] tonight—I can’t even think about it. I have to do a wedding today in Lakewood—the wedding’s on Thursday. So, are you on your knees?
ORAND: Mm-hmm.
MALE VOICE: And you’re putting your hand between your legs?
ORAND: Mm-hmm.
MALE VOICE: [Inaudible] and I’m squeezing your tits pretty hard—so ravishing—[inaudible] if you wanna play with me—how big it is—put the whole thing in your mouth—spreading your cheeks apart—rub it together hard [inaudible].
ORAND: Mmm.
MALE VOICE: I’ll say whatever you want me to say—I get so hard going inside, right by the G-spot, that tunnel, deep, deep inside—I pull myself out of you then I shut the windows, dark—and I rip off your dress—and I grab a hand and hold your [inaudible] tight—and you want to [inaudible] my cock, you touch it and play with it—and I want you to come closer and see it, how it’s swelled up—about to explode—whatever you want I’ll [inaudible] whenever you want—the first time you [inaudible] what was in your head?—it felt so good, it felt so good. [Inaudible.] The woman I’ve wanted so long, finally I have her—what did he grab onto while he was fucking you, what did he grab onto—what did he hold onto when he was fucking you, what did he hold onto. How did he come?
ORAND: [Inaudible.]
MALE VOICE: How did it feel? When did you come? How were you doing it—from the back? How long did you spend together the first time? How long would you spend together—how many times did he hurt you? Wow. Did he ever, ever, ever hurt you? When he was fucking you I mean—very, very rough with you—did he force you? How long did it take till you came when he forced you? What was he saying when he was doing it to you?
***
THE VIDEO
‘LEBA’: Hi, it’s Leba. Are you OK?
ORAND: I’m OK.
‘LEBA’: OK so anyway, so that was a really, I’m sorry that—we’re both getting tired so I thought maybe we should look at it. You have it here. So I looked at it a couple of times, he looked at it—it was very, very strange, like sort of a ghost it looked like, going in and out. And you see a woman in the background, drinking tea out of a cup, drinking something, it looks like me, but then you see a man kind of getting undressed and it looks like a man, but it’s unrecognizable, it’s a thin man. Then there’s this person with a beard that goes over to a very beautiful-looking, from the silhouette, a very beautiful, thin, gorgeous woman with long hair and she’s fluffing up her hair and she’s beckoning him to come and everything. And he just, I think it, some kind of interaction but then it goes back to, like, you see me, in and out, the images are going in and out, all very ghost-like and strange. They’re very strange, and you know there was this man, there’s another man, and it looks like, I don’t know, just very, very strange. Very strange.
ORAND: So was it like different things put together?
‘LEBA’: It could be, or just that it’s just a very strange, very strange. Yeah, it looks like time is reversed, the whole sequence is like very confusing and strange.
ORAND: So it’s manufactured, it’s totally bogus?
‘LEBA’: I don’t know if it’s manufactured. It’s certainly strange, it was definitely in a hotel room. There were two beds, and that was, it definitely looks like me drinking tea, fully dressed, drinking something from a cup. But then it’s like all in very strange sequences. It looks like it was taken from within the room. It looks like it was taken from the computer. How did they get in the room? It’s just very, very weird.
ORAND: Where can I see it?
‘LEBA’: I don’t know, I guess you’d have to ask Andy if you wanted to see it. I didn’t want it on my computer. My kids will see it on my computer. We were [inaudible] Tigris, actually, I rue the day. Because I said, Andy said, “They’re very ghost-like, you can’t tell anything, there’s a man with a beard and he kisses a woman on her head.” And then I said, “Well, why don’t we look at it?” I thought it sounded very benign. So we looked at it. I looked at it a couple times, because it was very confusing, I couldn’t really. I didn’t want it on my computer.
ORAND: Is it anything to worry about?
‘LEBA’: It certainly, people who know you and people who know Leib could pick us out. We’re there, that’s the scary part.
ORAND: You said there was a woman, it wasn’t really—
‘LEBA’: There’s a woman who looks very gorgeous to me, she’s very thin. It looks like the woman was an actress, actually, because it was so smooth, it was like so seductive like she’s beckoning and she lays down on her stomach with her legs up and you can see that she’s taken off her robe, very perfect rehearsed, which is interesting you know. And that’s how [inaudible], it could be you, it could be me, it could be Leib, it could be, you know. I don’t know how? Where are you now?
ORAND: I’m at a restaurant with my father and my kids. That’s why it’s noisy.
‘LEBA’: From my perspective it’s a big made-up thing, a lie, just a hoax. But I guess Andy’s the only one that could. So that’s the story.
ORAND: Nobody can be made out it’s not worth worrying about, right?
‘LEBA’: If nobody can be made out, yeah, I mean you can’t really see, but again it’s just that if you know the people. But on the email it says there’s more, and these are Japanese surveillance, and we have the full unedited, we did it for tsnius, we protected the people in it. I don’t know what that’s about.
ORAND: I need to go.
‘LEBA’: OK, we’re going to a wedding now. So I’ll speak to you. Say hi.
Transcribed by Hadara Graubart.
MORE: Tablet Magazine’s Allison Hoffman outlined the entire Tropper scandal here.
MORE: Tablet Magazine’s Marissa Brostoff profiled Shannon Orand here.
MORE: Read transcripts of the phone calls, plus hear some audio clips, here.
MORE: Allison Hoffman profiled Guma Aguiar here.
From the editors at Tablet Magazine