(eerie music)
- [Woman] The modelling industry want to buy innocence,
and then exploit it,
and they don't care about destroying it.
- [Woman] I was 15 and he was 42.
Next thing I knew he was pressed down on top of me.
I was a virgin at the time.
- [Man] They gave each other points
for the models that they slept with.
And virgins got higher points.
- [Woman] These men were perfecting a system
that had been developed over the course of decades.
- [Woman] The agency was manipulating me.
I was being groomed for rape and being sold as party favours.
- We have been groomed.
We have been conditioned.
And it's out there.
It's not anything that's hidden, totally blatant.
- I turned 20 and then went to Paris in February of 1980.
Gerald Marie had been to Los Angeles to meet with models,
to see who he wanted to recruit to come to Paris.
And he picked me.
At that time, Gerald was the head of Paris Planning.
I think it was the best agency in Paris at the time.
I was so excited and I thought, okay, I'm on my way.
This is great.
When I went into the agency,
Gerald came bouncing down the stairs in his leather outfit,
and his hair all curly.
And he was a peacock.
He was confident, and he was friendly, very friendly.
So I felt comfortable with him,
but he had complete power,
and the magazines would literally
ask him who to hire.
He could have made anybody's career,
or sabotaged anyone's career.
- Eventually Elite saw that Gerald Marie
was a significant competitor.
And one of the owners of Elite decided
that he wanted Gerald Marie to come to Elite
and stop being a successful competitor
at the Paris Planning Agency.
- Back then agents were perceived to almost be gods
walking on water.
♪ I need you tonight ♪
- They yielded the power above everybody.
Agencies were the heart of the business,
photographers, hairdressers, makeup artists, models,
everything had to go through the model agency.
♪ I'm lonely ♪
♪ I can take it off ♪
- It was very exciting to scout a model, develop a model,
and then to proudly
submit that model to Elite Europe.
And as an agent, I was the ambassador to help that happen.
However, the honeymoon would be over
when I started to hear stories of Gerald Marie.
(dark music)
- When I was told that I was gonna go stay
with the boss of the agency,
I actually thought that that was a good sign.
After that initial rape by Gerald Marie,
I would endure continuing assault.
The dissociation that took place,
there was a separation from myself just to survive.
And when I continued to work after that,
I mean, you know the face,
I knew the face that was expected of me.
I felt at that time that I had to put up with it,
because I would stop working, I would lose my job.
I would lose the roof over my head.
I would lose everything.
(somber piano music)
I got a break with French Elle,
and in some ways I believe that that was this like, okay,
you're doing what I want you to do, here you go.
Here's a break for you.
Nothing in my life was in my control.
Gerald really held me hostage.
(rock music)
- In 1992,
after I was discovered by John Casablancas,
Elite proposed the idea of coming to Paris.
They said Linda and Gerald have seen your pictures
and they love you.
We're gonna take you under our wing.
I was 15 at the time and I was on my own, this trip.
The agency assured my mother that they would have
a chaperone affiliated with the agency.
But when I got there,
there wasn't anyone there.
- I had already been working at the agency
when Shawna was brought in.
Shawna's mother wanted the best for her daughter.
And she had three agency owners
from the small town agency.
She had everybody at Elite.
She had all of these people flying in all over the world
to comfort her and to build her confidence
that Shawna was gonna be taken care of.
A whole period of grooming the parents
is part of this process,
because once they trusted you
they'll hand you over their children.
It's so much easier to control a 15 year old
when they can't run to their mom.
- The shoots in Paris were definitely a little more risqué.
I remember one shoot I did,
they had me in lingerie and they wrapped me up
in this like lace bondage type outfit.
And I remember thinking it was really weird, but you know,
I was just like, okay, when in Paris.
I figured that they were professional
and that I trusted them to guide my career.
- In Paris, I was starting to work.
I was getting, I was getting work.
I knew that I should have a chunk of money, you know,
maybe $1,500, $2,000.
But I think I was probably given like a hundred dollars.
I was so alone in a foreign country with no money,
not knowing what to do.
My booker started sending me
to fashion industry parties at night.
I thought, okay, fashion parties, that sounds great.
But the parties that I was sent to
were all held in big mansions,
and it was all older businessmen
from all around the world.
And it became obvious that we were there
to make the party look pretty.
We were being used.
I was getting attacked at some of these parties
by the men that were there.
One night, I was driven home by a man.
And then he broke through my hotel,
chased me upstairs,
broke into my room,
ripped my clothes off and jumped on me.
And I fought him off.
Next day, I went to Paris Planning and said,
no more parties, I can't do this anymore.
And Gerald bounced out of his chair and said,
no parties, no interviews.
It wasn't until I was in my 50's
that I was able to connect the dots.
The agency was manipulating me.
I was being groomed for rape.
(uptempo music)
- I'd been at Prestige for one month
before I decided to leave.
Claude was making me feel,
I was supposed to be playing a role
of some kind of bouncy, young little girl
that looked up to this father figure.
And then when he became physical with me,
and grabbing the shirt and the skirt and everything,
I just was like, I can't be around this person.
And so I got out of there,
and I was proud of myself for pulling myself up and saying,
I don't have to stay here.
So I had lined up this meeting with Karin's.
Karin's had an excellent reputation.
You really wanted to work there
if you could get in the door.
And it was run by Jean-Luc Brunel.
- I want to ask you something.
That little girl, Carol.
- Yes?
- I really like her.
- She's beautiful. - Yeah.
Do you think I could represent her in Paris.
- I have to talk to her mother.
- Jean-Luc Brunel was apparently from a decent family
who got involved I think in opening clubs and restaurants,
started dating pretty girls,
graduated to dating models,
and a model asked him to help her run an agency.
And Brunel became the swordsman partner.
And rather quickly got a reputation
as a guy who would jump the bones
of any girl who crossed his path.
In an interview for my book,
I asked Jean-Luc about the culture of model agents
and his life as an agent.
And he was surprisingly candid about his values.
(soft piano music)
- Unfortunately Karin's said, oh no, no,
we've taken all the girls that we can now.
And I'm like,
frick.
I kept checking in weekly.
And one day Jean-Luc came by and said,
you need to lose more weight in your face,
come back next week.
And so I'd be on these missions of just dropping weight,
and I'd come back in again.
And Jean-Luc was like, nope, you gotta lose more.
And I'm like, how much more?
Like it was getting to the point where it was ridiculous.
I needed to work.
It was hard to make ends meet.
And as a foreigner, I can't really just go start working.
I didn't speak French well enough to do that.
So I was really dependent completely
on the modelling for my money.
With these predators, you know, it's an instinct.
I was desperate.
And so he already knew he had this power over me.
With other stories I've heard about other girls,
where they've run away from home,
or they have nothing and they can smell that.
They know.
- After the whole party incident,
I was running out of money.
I was miserable.
So I decided to talk to Gerald,
and I was terrified to talk to him, but I did.
I confronted him and politely asked him
to send me out to the big clients because I need to work.
So he agreed, and he said, okay,
there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to make it.
I'll send you out.
Right after he said he would support me,
I landed a job for a major magazine.
I was really excited and really hopeful,
and started dreaming again.
Like, you know, maybe I can get the good jobs,
but it seems very controlling, when I look at it now.
- One day I showed up at the agency.
Jean-Luc, he was like, okay, all right, you can come.
And tomorrow I want you to call me between five and seven.
I'm like call you?
And he goes, yeah.
And I got his home number.
So I felt like now I'm in.
- After my Elle cover,
and when these dynamics continued, I was miserable.
I was depressed, I was scared.
I was exhausted, I was traumatised.
Whatever facade I had been holding up,
like it just started to break.
Like the tough kid just started to break.
There was one time that Gerald made another advance at me.
And I pushed back.
I just remember in the moment expressing, like,
I can't do this, I don't wanna do this.
And it was like, like a switch that flipped.
I knew what the no would mean for me,
and that everything was about to change again.
And it was clear to me, not for the better.
(crowd murmuring)
- One night Gerald invited me
and another model to go to dinner.
He said there would be other people.
So we went to dinner and there weren't other people.
It was just the other model, me and Gerald.
We were talking and having fun and laughing.
And he said, let's go back to my house and talk some more.
So we all went there.
(soft music)
After a while, my roommate said she was leaving
because she had a booking in the morning,
and I said, I'm gonna stay longer.
I was just having so much fun.
I didn't have any second thoughts.
I felt completely safe.
Then at some point he leaned over and kissed me.
And I was surprised that I, I actually liked it.
And I felt like I was back in California on a date.
Then we were talking some more.
And then he called me into his bedroom.
He was sitting at the foot of the bed,
watching a John Wayne movie in black and white.
He said, come, come see this.
This is funny.
And so I sat next to him and was watching it.
He leaned over and kissed me again.
And then he just
grabbed me and raped me,
violently.
(dark music)
I could not get away from him, he had a grip on me so tight.
I was screaming for him to stop.
And I was scared and he wouldn't stop until he was finished.
And then he just went to sleep.
And I laid there crying
for hours, just silently, as quietly as possible, crying.
I was just literally
scared and in shock.
And he was sleeping next to me as if nothing had happened.
As soon as I saw a tiny bit of light,
I grabbed my clothes and got out.
My mind would go from panicked thoughts
to being catatonic and not able to have a thought.
And then I started to tell myself that I wasn't raped.
I think it was a survival mechanism.
(rock music)
♪ Wandering stars ♪
♪ For whom it is preserved ♪
- [Shawna] At that point in time,
I was living in this model apartment
full of a lot of girls.
♪ Wandering stars. ♪
- All the girls were getting invited out,
so I just thought it was an opportunity to network,
and to make friends, I mean, I was 15 in Paris.
One evening I was out with some models from the apartment.
We were invited to the Bandouche,
which was a popular nightclub in the modelling industry.
I was kind of mingling and talking to different people.
And then Gerald would kind of come over
every once in a while,
and he would like lean in and he'd be talking to me.
I was wondering why he kind of kept coming over.
And then eventually I was kind of by myself
and he offered me a ride home.
At one point,
I realised that he was going the wrong direction.
He was going across the river instead of to my apartment,
which was very close to the club.
I started to yell at him and ask him, you know,
where we were going and where he was taking me,
and he just kind of laughed it off
and said that we were going to his apartment.
When we arrived, he did not turn on any lights,
and he led me into his bedroom.
My instincts are telling me that something's wrong,
but you know, I mean,
I was used to relying on these people to take care of me,
drive me around, put a roof over my head.
I thought, well, maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting things, you know,
but my instinct was, you should get outta here.
But I didn't even have an opportunity
to try and prepare myself for getting out of a situation.
I was just kind of fully in it.
He was just like, oh, you know, don't worry.
Just go in the bed, just sleep in the bed, it's fine.
And he left the room.
Next thing I knew he was pressed down on top of me
with his tongue aggressively in my mouth.
His full weight was on top of me and I tried to resist,
but I couldn't move.
And then after, I don't know, a few minutes,
I felt myself sort of just freeze and give into it.
I was kind of just like, I don't know,
maybe I should just let him have his way so I can
just get outta this situation.
Like I was terrified.
And then he continued to rape me after that.
I was a Virgin at the time,
so I didn't have any sexual experience with anyone.
I don't think I had sort of the boundaries at that age,
or the defence mechanisms to, you know,
ward off that kind of behaviour.
(dark music)
- I started to hear stories of Gerald Marie,
either sexually assaulting or sexually harassing the models.
When they would tell me their stories of trauma
and swear me to secrecy, I was very conflicted.
I couldn't really do anything, although I wanted to,
and yet I didn't even know what to do.
The honeymoon was over,
and the only power that I had at that time as an employee
was to stop placing models in Paris with Gerald Marie.
So what I started to do, instead of sending them to Paris,
I would send them to markets where I didn't think
that there would be a sexual pervert waiting for them.
(rock music)
- Jean-Luc was so powerful and was so well connected.
And I started going to parties,
getting appointments and bookings.
And I was very excited.
I was like, oh, he sees me as a valuable asset
to his modelling agency.
This is great.
A few weeks later,
I get invited to a private dinner at his house.
So now I feel like maybe he sees me
as something special or a cut above.
It was a big party,
lots of people and some famous models as well.
I totally felt like I was in the inter sanctum.
I felt like I stepped up a big notch.
I was keeping an eye on the time
as the Metro stops running at a certain point
and I don't have money for a cab.
So I'd go, it's almost midnight, you know, gotta go.
And Jean-Luc was like, no, no, no, no, no.
Don't leave yet.
Don't leave, sleep here.
And I was like, oh, I can't do that.
And one of the models is like, no people do it all the time.
Yeah, people sleep on the couches.
So everybody went to bed
and Jean-Luc and I sat there and talked,
and he was like, yes, I see, you know,
I really have hopes for you, I think this will be great.
And so we had this one on one talk,
and I felt really privileged sitting there.
And he goes, I want you to be comfortable.
Come, go sleep in my bed.
I was like, no, no.
No, no, no, my dear, you need to sleep.
You need to have good beauty rest, I worry about you.
I'm shaking right now as I say this.
And he goes, go to my bed.
I'll sleep out here in the living room.
You go, now.
There was a part of me that was like,
this doesn't feel right,
but the other part was like,
I'd better be a good girl and follow along.
He's my boss.
So I stupidly go into his bedroom.
And I managed to fall asleep.
And I woke up and he was on top of me,
and he was fully naked.
And he was thrusting between my legs, trying to enter me.
But I had my panties on,
and he has his face right next to me.
And he's like, you don't have to kiss me.
He's repeating it.
You don't have to kiss me.
And I literally flip him,
'cause he's not that big a guy,
and he's pissed,
and then he takes my head and he tries to make me
go down on him.
And I'm just like, no.
And he takes my hand and puts it on him,
and starts making me move it.
And so I did.
And then he rolled over and slept on his stomach,
and I was petrified.
Yeah.
I believed him, I really believed him
when he said that stuff to me.
I don't think I'm a stupid woman.
I think I'm quite intelligent.
But a part of me wanted to believe him.
Right?
I just was in such shock and disbelief
and it was devastating.
It really destroyed me.
(soft music)
- I told the model that lived with me what happened,
and a few days later, the booker called me and said,
Gerald wants to see you in his office.
I got myself together, and I went to the agency.
When I got there,
he shut the door behind me and he said,
so I hear that you say that I raped you?
And I just started bawling and crying.
And he just thought it was a joke.
He was smirking, and then I just said,
I really wanna go home.
And he said, oh, and what are you gonna do,
go home and flip burgers?
You can go now.
I was only 15, so I thought these people
were gonna take care of me and guide my career.
I did not think that I would end up in that situation.
- After it happened, I went back to the agency.
That's the part that makes me really mad.
I show up and my booker's there and she's like,
I can't be seen talking to you, go away, go away, go away.
You need to leave now.
And I'm like, I did nothing wrong.
He did it to me.
And so I go charging into Jean-Luc's room,
and he's on the phone, he's like, and he is furious.
And he's like, get out, get out!
And I was like, I wanna talk to you,
I wanna talk about what happened.
And he's, get out.
You don't work here anymore, get out.
And he pushes me out of the room.
And I went out to the top of the stairs
and I'm just standing there shaking,
like what the fuck?
This man tried to rape me?
And then he fires me?
(soft music)
- When I said no to Gerald Marie,
I was immediately like next day sent to a model's apartment
in a really bad area of Paris.
It was like squalor, it was horrible.
And that was my new reality.
It became really clear that there was a wrath
and I was on the other side of it.
On one hand, I was relieved to be away from Gerald,
and on the other hand,
I was in a whole new arena of,
what was I gonna do?
You know, I had no real work on the horizon.
- Elite sent me to Milan
where I went to be with one of Gerald's friend's agency.
Milan was really next level
in terms of sordid and dark.
It was yet another world to navigate.
- After being attacked by Gerald my work stopped.
I thought I'm gonna have to pound the pavement
and hope that these tear sheets that I did recently
will come out fast enough
for me to try to show them around and get some work.
Eventually my booker at Paris Planning called me,
and asked me if I'd like to come to Monte Carlo
for the weekend.
And I said, how much do you think it'll cost?
And she said, oh, it's free.
And I said, no, no, nothing's free.
And she goes, no, really it's free.
By this point, I just wanted to forget about modelling.
(disco music)
So we went to Monte Carlo.
We laid out by the pool.
And then that night we met some of her friends in the lobby
who came to pick us up to take us to a party.
It was a crazy party, champagne, caviar.
And at some point a man came over
and pulled me out of my chair to dance.
He and I were having an absolute ball.
And my booker came over to me and she's like,
do you know who you're dancing with?
Do you know who you're dancing with?
It turned out that he was Adnan Khashoggi,
one of the wealthiest men in the world.
I had no idea who he was.
I didn't realise the wealth that he had,
and he and I just hit it off.
We connected.
It was like a breath of fresh air
compared to my experience in Paris.
A few weeks later,
I was invited to lunch at his house and then a dinner.
And then I was invited to go on vacation
with his whole group.
I had now seen him several times,
and I really had been thinking about him a lot.
I was happy, I felt like, I've got a boyfriend.
I was excited,
but I was really unaware of the situation
with the other women at that point.
(mysterious music)
- Within a short time of me being in Milan,
I was told I was booked on a job on Lake Como, Italy.
I was to get on a bus and get off the bus at a certain stop,
and that I would be picked up.
I remember sitting on my suitcase in the middle of nowhere.
It was dark.
I waited quite some time.
A Ferrari rolls up with a very large Italian man in it.
And off we went into the night to this massive villa.
They were prepping for a big party.
I remember something seemed off.
There were so many girls there, there were women from,
I won't call them women,
I will call them girls, from other countries
that were as young as myself, if not younger.
There were girls who, I don't know if they were drugged,
but clearly like severely intoxicated, and older men.
I spent that night and the next night,
keeping my door locked and staving off these
loud, obnoxious, you need to come down to the party,
thumping on my door, from the Italian man.
It could have been a much worse situation.
I was able to keep the door locked,
but it was definitely scary.
The fact is there was no photo shoot.
I was booked on that job for sex.
Literally, I was trafficked out by my agent.
- When I first started seeing Adnan,
we were alone most of the time.
And then I was invited to dinners
where there were other women.
As it went on, it became more out in the open.
And then one night I was doing my homework
in his hotel suite,
because by then I was in fashion design school.
He was doing his business papers,
and a man that worked for him came in
and brought a black notebook,
and it was filled with pages of models' composites,
and Adnan was asking, well,
how much is it to meet this one?
What about this one?
And he's like, well, this one's 25,000 for an introduction.
And then I looked at them and I said,
is this how you met me?
And they busted up laughing.
They were totally guilty.
It was obvious that this was what happened.
And he confirmed it later.
He told me that he had paid the agency.
He paid $50,000 to meet me.
He had chosen me from a photo.
And when I found that out, I was, I was done.
I wanted out, now.
When I realised that he had paid to meet me,
I realised that my agency had this whole thing going.
They had been manipulating me,
completely behind my back,
as an innocent, young,
naive woman.
They had set up to sell me
before I had even gone to Monte Carlo.
And I really tried to suppress the reality of that,
because I was not equipped.
I had already endured a rape.
Now I've been sold.
- At that time,
we did not have language called sex trafficking.
What we had was a culture where this is who the leader is,
and this is the culture that you are expected
to behave within.
I had friends at the time that were part of media,
and I tried to tell them.
Nobody wanted to hear what I have to say.
It was like, shh.
Marie, that's kind of a distasteful conversation.
- It's a process.
And there was a moment when things that were never discussed
began to be spoken of.
(eerie music)
- We turned on the television, we watched it,
and I was in shock.
I couldn't believe that, here was Diane Sawyer,
interviewing girls who worked at
two of the agencies I worked at.
Some of the girls who had been drugged,
date rape drugs, put on planes,
thinking they're going on a shoot,
and they're actually going to be a concubine for a weekend.
It was incredibly eyeopening to know that it wasn't just me.
It was like, oh wow.
For all these years, I've been holding that,
thinking it was me.
I did something wrong.
- After that 60 Minutes show aired,
for some reason it disappeared.
It was never shown again.
And Jean-Luc Brunel continued to behave as he always had.
I began pursuing all of these lines of inquiry,
which led me to the offices of Karin's Models in Paris.
So this is Jean-Luc Brunel after 60 Minutes.
- What was shocking was just how blase he was,
how sure of himself, how cocky.
They all were.
- I was completely aware that I was in the presence
of dangerous monsters.
These guys have been getting away with sexual assaults
for most of their lives.
- When I was the Vice President of Elite Chicago,
the last year that I worked there,
there was an Elite summit in Ibiza.
After the last meeting,
the two senior women from Elite New York,
begging John Casablancas and Gerald Marie
to stop sleeping with the 13- and 14-year-old girls.
Both of the men defended themselves,
saying it was no big deal, they weren't gonna change.
John's response was, come on, stop being so puritanical.
I was so appalled,
I quit the agency business.
Boom, basta, I'm done.
(dark music)
- It's a time to hold this man accountable for his crimes.
That's why being here in France
and testifying to the French police
with these women is so meaningful.
(dark orchestral music)