Ex-model speaks out against French fashion boss

After years of silence, more than a dozen women hope their gruesome testimony will prompt prosecutors to pursue a pillar of the French fashion industry, which is accused of abusing young models with widespread impunity for decades.

“This has haunted me for 20 years,” Lisa Brinkworth, a former BBC journalist, told AFP about her meeting with Gerald Marie, former head of the Elite European modeling agency, and the aftermath.

Brinkworth was one of several women who met with investigators from the French police child protection brigade last week, with others set to do so in the coming days.

An investigation was opened in September 2020 after complaints were filed over allegations of rape and sexual abuse between 1980 and 1998, including against minors.

While that usually puts them outside France’s statute of limitations for prosecution, the women hope their accounts will still lead to criminal prosecution, especially if they encourage more recent victims to speak up.

“I just think now’s the right time. He’s been untouched for too long,” said Brinkworth.

– ‘Keep going’ –

At the time of the alleged infringement, Elite Models had launched a career with notable names including Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Marie’s ex-wife, supermodel Linda Evangelista.

Brinkworth met Marie in 1998, when she posed as a model for a report on US financier Jeffrey Epstein, who faced multiple charges of trafficking in child sex before his 2019 suicide.

He is also investigating Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent and colleague of Epstein, who was charged with the rape of a minor over 15 and abuse last December.

“I’m just amazed at how many women are making accusations against Gerald Marie,” she said.

During dinner at a nightclub in Milan, he said, Marie repeatedly proposed to him and offered to pay for sex, before pinning him to a chair and assaulting him through his clothes.

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“I was completely powerless to do anything, and I said ‘no, no, no’ and he kept walking,” she recalled.

However, although Brinkworth managed to record most of the incident, he said he was prevented from bringing it up through a deal between the BBC and Elite in 2001 following a defamation lawsuit.

– ‘I froze’ –

Ebba Karlsson, a former Elite model from Sweden who also spoke with investigators last week, said Marie was quick to dismiss her notion of a glamorous career as a fashion face.

He recounts a meeting where Marie showed pictures of the agency’s models, asking if she knew how they became famous while putting her hands on her feet.

“She said, ‘Well, to be so famous, you have to give something of yourself’,” she said, then raised her hand over her dress to attack him.

“I felt like someone cut off my head. My strength just disappeared. I had no strength. I froze,” he said.

Sources close to the investigation told AFP that at least five other former models will speak to investigators this week, while about a dozen others have made similar harassment claims but remain reluctant to file formal reports.

Marie also faces criminal charges filed in New York last month by Carre Sutton, a former Elite model, who has accused her of serial sexual assault since she was 17.

Sutton, known as Carrie Otis during her modeling career, will hold a press conference in Paris on Tuesday.

Marie has denied wrongdoing but has not been questioned about the allegations, her lawyer Celine Bekerman told AFP.

“He kept his final statement for the competent authorities,” he said.

But Karlsson, Brinkworth and others hope the sheer number of women who have emerged in the wake of the MeToo movement denouncing sexual harassment and abuse will encourage prosecutors to take action.

“We have lawyers and we are strong and the more we are, the more power we have,” Karlsson said.

“If he is not convicted of this crime, at least we have caused some noise, noise, which can create more awareness about such a world in the model industry.”

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