Six women have filed civil complaints against Elite Model Management’s former president Gérald Marie, alleging rape and human trafficking at the Paris Judicial Court. But an attorney for Marie said on Friday he “firmly denies” the allegations.
Marie, who exited Elite years ago, is also facing a civil complaint that was filed last month by the model Carré Otis. In recent years, she has accused Marie of rape and human trafficking that allegedly occurred when she was starting out as a model at the age of 17. Otis along with 14 other women had initially filed complaints against Marie in Paris in 2020, which were later dismissed by the Paris prosecutor’s office due to the statute of limitations having run out.
Asked about the six new civil complaints, Marie’s attorney Céline Bekerman said in a statement Friday, “My client firmly denies these allegations, as he has consistently done. There is nothing new in these complaints. A thorough investigation conducted by the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office was already carried out and resulted in the case being dismissed in 2023.”
Mathias Darmon, the attorney who is representing the six women, said Friday, “These complaints are part of a broader movement of speaking out, sparked by the formal complaint filed by Carré Otis on June 5, 2026. Gérald Marie potentially raped dozens of young women between the 1980s and the 2000s, acting with a sense of total impunity and within an utterly intolerable culture of rape. Today, voices are finally being raised to denounce these heinous crimes.”
Some of Darmon’s clients had filed complaints in the 2020 case. In this week’s filing, he wrote, “However, the investigations undertaken at that time failed to provide a judicial response commensurate with the gravity of the allegations, even though new victims have since come forward and new evidence has emerged.”
Bekerman’s statement closed with, “The justice system has better uses for its resources than reopening, 40 years after the alleged events, a case that is both time-barred and has already been dismissed. The same allegations cannot be endlessly recycled. This amounts to harassment. Gérald Marie has rights, and he intends to assert them.”
In an Instagram post Wednesday, Otis wrote: “Dozens of women have been telling their stories of this man and his world in their own books, television series, media interviews, documentaries and more without a drop of legal recognition or any semblance of justice.” She noted that she published her own account in her 2011 book “Beauty Interrupted.”
“Encouraging” any others who have allegedly been raped, assaulted or harassed “to join us,” Otis posted that “survivors” can file Jane Doe cases. Otis asked that anyone who witnessed or has relevant information to come forward. She included contact information for the Innocence in Danger and Model Alliance.
In addition to those two advocacy groups, there are organizations such as Victorious Angels, which is composed of survivors including many from the modeling industry who are calling for greater accountability. In March, former model Ebba Karlsson and Lisa Brinkworth, a Victoria’s Secret Angels advocate, presented a letter to the Paris public prosecutor’s office that requested an inquiry into Marie in relation to Jeffrey Epstein. Brinkworth alleged that Marie assaulted her while she was working as a journalist on an undercover investigation about the modeling industry for a BBC documentary that was released in 1999. She was among those who filed a complaint in 2020 that was subsequently dismissed. Brinkworth had also appealed that decision unsuccessfully, and has since taken her case to the European Court of Human Rights.
One of the 15 former models who signed that letter in March was Laurie Marsden, who has alleged that Marie assaulted her after a party in 1982. She said in April, “We asked them to investigate Gérald Marie’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein given an association among Jean-Luc Brunel, Gérald Marie and Epstein.”
Separately, in March of this year, The Model Alliance’s founder Sara Ziff and 25 models sent a letter to U.S. House of Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie requesting an investigation into “the modeling industry’s role in facilitating Jeffrey Epstein’s [alleged] trafficking operation.”
In 2022, Brunel, a cofounder of MC2 Model Management, died of an apparent suicide in a Paris cell, where he had been awaiting trial on charges of rape of a minor and sexual harassment. The agency was started with some financial support from Epstein.
Thysia Huisman, who alleged that Brunel drugged and raped her in Paris after a party in his apartment in 1991, filed a civil case against his estate in 2024. She said Friday, “The courage of these six survivors is extraordinary. To take on someone as powerful as Gérald Marie through a civil case takes strength most people will never fully understand. I know that courage. I know what it costs.”
Huisman this year released an updated English version of her book, “Close Up,” which explores “the dark side of modeling.” “The same principle: accountability does not end with power, money, or even death. What was done to us matters and it demands justice,” she said Friday.
She added, “These women are not just telling their stories. They are forcing a system that has protected powerful men for far too long to finally confront the truth. This is what change looks like — not silence, but resistance. Not fear, but action.”
Earlier this year, Karlsson appealed to French prosecutors about the alleged trafficking, rape and sexual harassment that she faced as a model 35 years ago. She said in March, “We have got to keep the momentum. People cannot stop talking. People who have been involved with Epstein should be transparent, come forward and share everything they know. Otherwise, how can we change the system, if people are still in the shadows and are hiding things?”
Huisman said Friday, “I will keep speaking, no matter what it takes.”
