Ex Elite model agency boss Gerald Marie, 70, ‘raped two models aged 17 and 20’, legal docs allege
THE former head of one of the world's largest modelling agencies has been accused of rape and sexual assault in France.
Gerald Marie, 70, who served as president of the Paris-based Elite Model Management for 25 years, is alleged to have carried out a number of attacks on different women in the 1980s and 1990s.
In legal documents submitted to the Tribunal Judiciaire in Paris this week, Carré Otis, 51, and Jill Dodd, 60, accuse Marie of raping them when they were aged 17 and 20 respectively.
Two other women accuse Marie of assaulting them during the same period.
Marie, now chairman of another agency, Oui Management, denies the allegations.
In a statement to the , he said: "It would not be appropriate for me to comment at this time on the allegations of historic wrongdoing being made against me, other than to make it clear that I categorically deny them."
No criminal proceedings have so far begun, and prosecutors could decide not to pursue the allegations.
Some of the world's best-known models, including Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, and Claudia Schiffer, have been represented by Elite.
Otis, originally from the US, relocated to France to work for Elite aged just 17, and says she felt unable to come forward at the time of the alleged attack.
She said she was doing so now to help stop “intolerable acts by men in power who seem to be able to act in all impunity”.
Dodd alleges that she was raped by Marie in 1980 after moving to France to work for Paris Planning, where he was then booking director.
She says in the legal documents that the experience left her with PTSD and made it difficult for her to trust men.
“I was so scared and full of shame about it that I didn’t talk about it for years and years," she said.
“It still impacts my life for sure, I don’t know that it ever really goes away.”
A third woman, Ebba Karlsson, 51, says she was assaulted during a meeting with Marie in his office in Paris and that she returned "traumatised" to her native Sweden not long afterwards.
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The papers also include an account from journalist Lisa Brinkworth, who claims Marie assaulted her in 1998 while she was undercover as part of a BBC exposé on the modelling industry.
The women say that by coming forward they hope to encourage others to help protect young women from predatory behaviour.
