Gerald Marie, who led Elite Model Management’s operations in Europe, has been the target of six new criminal complaints after years of similar allegations.
Several women have accused Gerald Marie, the former head of Elite Model Management’s European operations, of rape and human trafficking in criminal complaints filed in France. At least one of the plaintiffs claims he was sexually abused as a child.
Marie, whose agency represented some of the world’s biggest models, including Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, and Cindy Crawford, has faced similar accusations from more than a dozen women over the past several years. French prosecutors initially investigated the allegations but closed the case in 2023 because the alleged offences, dating back to the 1980s and early 1990s, were outside the statute of limitations. Marie has denied any wrongdoing.
The six women, most of them American, filed the latest complaint on Wednesday, according to their lawyer, Mathias Darmon. Two are accusing Marie publicly for the first time, including one who claims she was a minor when she was assaulted.
The complaint alleges that Marie, while running one of the world’s modeling agencies in Paris, “he used the power, influence and power given to him by his position to have forced sexual relations with many girls, some of whom were underage,” according to quotes published by Le Monde and AFP.
Responding to the new filing, Marie’s lawyer, Celine Bekerman, said there was “There is no reason to ask the court to revisit a case that has been suspended and closed, almost 40 years after the alleged events.”
Last month, former supermodel Carre Otis filed a separate complaint in Paris accusing Marie of repeatedly raping her when she was 17 and trafficking her to rich men in Europe. Otis first made the claim in his 2011 memoir, Beauty, Disrupted.
Earlier this year, 14 women, including former BBC journalist Lisa Brinkworth, also called on French authorities to investigate Marie over an alleged relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In 2020, several former models from the United States, Canada, and Sweden told The Guardian that they had been sexually harassed after Marie invited them to private meetings in her apartments in the 1980s. Several said they did not come forward sooner because they feared it would end their modeling careers, while others accused her of exploiting their youth and having poor French.
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