Six women accuse French ex-model boss of rape, human trafficking

Les coulisses de la finale Elite Model Look 2001 avec le directeur de l'agence Elite Europe : Gérald Marie. (Photo by Stephane Ruet/Sygma via Getty Images)

Six foreign women, mostly American, filed legal complaints in France Wednesday accusing ex-modelling agency boss Gerald Marie of rape and human trafficking in the 1980s and 1990s, their lawyer said.

They are the latest allegations against the former European head of Elite, a modelling agency known for managing supermodels Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford.

The women -- now in their mid-forties to sixties -- include two who are accusing him for the first time, lawyer Mathias Darmon said.

One of them has accused Marie, now in his mid-70s, of abusing her when she was a minor, he added.

Wednesday’s complaints, seen by AFP, highlight similarities between the accusations of the six plaintiffs.

“Marie, then head of an international modelling agency with a major presence in Paris, is alleged to have, over several decades, used the authority, influence, and power conferred on him by his role to obtain forced sexual relations with numerous young women, some of whom were underage,” it said.

The new complaints follow former top model Carre Otis, now 57, last month formally accusing Marie of human trafficking and raping her when she was 17 in the mid-1980s, Darmon said.

She said she was abused at his home while Marie’s then girlfriend, top model Linda Evangelista, was away.

Investigators in 2023 closed another probe into accusations Marie committed sexual abuse in the 1980s and 1990s because it was too long ago to be prosecuted.

Among his accusers then were Otis as well as former BBC journalist Lisa Brinkworth, who alleged Marie sexually assaulted her in public in Milan in 1998 when she was a reporter.

Marie’s lawyer Celine Bekerman said her client categorically denied any wrongdoing and the allegations had already been investigated.

“There is no reason whatsoever to call on the courts to again revisit a case that is both time-barred and closed, nearly 40 years after the alleged events,” she said.

Brinkworth and 14 other women in March urged France to investigate Marie for possible links to late convicted US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the subject of a French investigation into human trafficking.

Activists have urged France to lift all time limits within which sexual crimes can be investigated under French law.