French modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who allegedly procured young women and minors for the late US financier Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested and taken into custody by police at Paris Charles-de-Gaulle airport on Wednesday as he prepared to board a flight to the Senegalese capital Dakar.
Brunel, 74, who once managed the Karin Models agency and later founded the US-based MC2 Model Management agency with funding from Epstein, is himself accused of rape and sexual assault by several women, as previously detailed in investigations by Mediapart (see below) and other media.
His arrest for questioning follows the opening of a preliminary investigation last August by the Paris prosecution services into suspected “rape”, “sexual assault”, notably of minors, and “criminal conspiracy” in connection with the activities in France of Epstein and others connected to him.
Epstein was found dead after an apparent suicide on August 10th 2019 in his New York prison cell, where he had been detained on multiple sex-trafficking charges. He was arrested one month earlier after flying back to New York from Paris where he owned an apartment.
One of Epstein’s principal accusers in the US, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, has alleged she was made to have sex with Brunel and to watch him during “sexual acts with dozens of underage girls” who he brought to Epstein.
In 2015, Brunel denied involvement in the criminal activities Epstein was accused of, but since the financier’s death last year he has offered no public comment over the allegations against him, and has failed to respond to Mediapart’s repeated attempts to interview him.
With the opening of the Paris prosecution services’ investigation, several former models came forward with complaints of rape and sexual assault against Brunel. In October last year, Mediapart revealed the accounts of three others (in French, here) whose allegations included being drugged by Brunel.
Below is a Mediapart report published on August 24th 2019 following the opening of the prosecutors’ investigations, which details several accusations levelled against Brunel by alleged victims, and a link to an in-depth investigation by Mediapart into Epstein’s suspected sex-trafficking network in France.
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The Paris prosecution services on Friday [August 23rd 2019] launched a preliminary investigation into suspected “rape”, “sexual assault”, notably of minors, and “criminal conspiracy” in connection with the activities in France of the late US financier Jeffrey Epstein and others connected to him.
Epstein, 66, was found dead by hanging in his New York prison cell on August 10th, after he was charged with multiple sex offences, including exploitation and abuse of dozens of underage girls for which he faced, if convicted, a maximum 45-year prison sentence.
He had been placed in New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center after his arrest at New Jersey’s Teterboro airport on July 6th, after flying in on his private jet from Paris where he owned a luxurious apartment.
The Paris prosecutors’ preliminary investigation was opened after information received in late July from a French child protection association which listed detailed the accounts of ten people who claimed, variously, to have been victims or witnesses of sexual violence committed by Epstein and his entourage. The prosecution services also received information from the US investigation which was pertinent to Epstein’s activities in France.
Epstein was convicted by a Florida court in 2008 of soliciting prostitution involving a minor, after a plea deal with local justice officials which allowed him to escape federal charges that may have resulted from an FBI investigation which suspected him of organising sex parties with dozens of minors at his luxurious mansion at Palm Beach, and also at his other properties in New York, New Mexico and at his private Caribbean island of Little Saint James in the US Virgin Islands. Epstein was placed on the sex offenders register and served just 13 months of an 18-month prison sentence, when he was allowed to work at his office during the day.
Epstein regularly sojourned at his apartment on the upmarket Avenue Hoche in central Paris, and had spent three weeks in the French capital before his arrest on July 6th. He was closely associated with French model agency manager and scout Jean-Luc Brunel, who has been accused by Epstein’s alleged victims in the US as participating in the financier’s sex parties and supplying Epstein with girls for his orgies.
Jean-Luc Brunel has firmly denied the accusations.
Epstein had a network of contacts in the French capital, as demonstrated by his address book, extracts of which were published by the website Gawker in 2015. Under the section “Paris” figured a list of high society names and addresses, and a lengthy contact list of feminine names under the title “Massage” (see below).
Enlargement : Illustration 1
“It was a surprise birthday gift from one of his friends and they were from France. I did see them, I did meet them," she said. “Jeffrey bragged afterwards after he met them that they were 12-year-olds and flown over from France because they're really poor over there, and their parents needed the money, or whatever the case is, and they were absolutely free to stay and flew out.”
Enlargement : Illustration 2
In a statement issued on Friday by chief Paris public prosecutor Rémi Heitz, he said the preliminary investigation now underway was into suspected “rape, rape of minors aged above 15, rape of 15-year-old minors, sexual assault, sexual assault on minors aged 15, sexual assault of minors aged above 15, criminal conspiracy aimed at committing crimes, and criminal conspiracy aimed at committing crimes punishable by at least five years in prison”.
Also on Friday, French child protection association ‘Innocence en danger’ issued a statement in which it welcomed the launch of the investigation, and said it would keep confidential” the contents of the information and witness accounts” it had passed on to the prosecution services “over the course of recent weeks”.
On August 12th, as media revelations of Epstein’s connections with France emerged, French gender equality minister Marlène Schiappa and child welfare minister Adrien Taquet issued a joint statement in which they called for an investigation to be opened. "The American investigation has brought to light links with France,” they wrote. “It therefore seems to us fundamental, for the victims, that an investigation should be opened in France so that all light is shed.”
In an interview with French daily Le Parisien on Wednesday, US lawyer Gloria Allred, who represents several accusers of Epstein, said it would be disrespectful for victims if no investigation was opened in France, adding that if there were French victims of Epstein she would be open to contact with them.
The scope of the French investigation is a large one, for it involves not only crimes that may have been committed in France, but also those involving French victims or perpetrators committed abroad. “All fields are open,” a spokesperson for the Paris prosecution services told Mediapart.
After Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s accusations against her, Ghislaine Maxwell denounced Giuffre as a liar, prompting Giuffre to launch a defamation suit against Maxwell in 2015. In Giuffre’s very detailed deposition, revealed in the US media and which included her accounts of sexual abuse by Epstein and his prominent acquaintances, Giuffre accused French model scout Jean-Luc Brunel, manager of the international model agency MC2 Modeling Management, of supplying young girls to Epstein for orgies. “I also had sexual intercourse with Jean-Luc Brunel many times when I was 16 through 19 years old,” she stated. “He was another of Epstein’s powerful friends who had many contacts with young girls throughout the world. In fact, his only similarity with Epstein and the only link to their friendship appeared to be that Brunel could get dozens of underage girls and feed Epstein’s (and Maxwell’s) strong appetite for sex with minors.”
“Brunel ran some kind of modeling agency and appeared to have an arrangement with the U.S. Government where he could get passports or other travel documents for young girls,” continued Giuffre in her deposition. “He would then bring these young girls (girls ranging in age from 12 to 24) to the United States for sexual purposes and farm them out to his friends, including Epstein.”
“Brunel would offer the girls ‘modeling’ jobs. A lot of the girls came from poor countries or poor backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money. I had to have sex with Brunel at Little St. James (orgies), Palm Beach, New York City, New Mexico, Paris, the south of France, and California.”
“Jeffrey Epstein has told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls, and everything that I have seen confirms this claim,” Giuffre added.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
In the end, the case she brought against Maxwell was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount in 2017, shortly before it was due to go to trial.
In a Mediapart investigation published earlier this month, two former models who had dealings with Brunel, claims to have helped launch the modelling careers of Jerry Hall, Sharon Stone and Christy Turlington, gave disturbing accounts of their experiences with him.
Former model Zoë Brock told Mediapart that she was offered accommodation in Brunel’s large apartment on the avenue Hoche in central Paris when she arrived in the French capital in the early 1990s to work with his model agency. Speaking by phone from her native New Zealand, she said she was then aged 17 or 18 when Brunel, who she said was aged around 45, invited her to his bedroom when he announced they would at some point sleep together, and offered her cocaine. She said she subsequently kept her distance from him and as a result he sent her to a flat overcrowded with other girls in the Pigalle red-light district. She recounted that later, when she worked with other agencies, she discovered that she had been given a reputation as a drug user.
In October 2017, Brock, who became an actress, was among the first to accuse Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, which she said happened when the two were attending the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.
Former Dutch model Thysia Huisman has told Mediapart that, also in the early 1990s, she was raped by Brunel. Speaking by telephone from the Netherlands, she said she had been sent to Paris by her modelling agency, and the events took place in Brunel’s Paris apartment after she was served a spiked drink. She said she found herself in Brunel’s bed, with Brunel on top of her. The next day, she recalled, she woke up feeling disorientated and, hearing Brunel in a phone conversation, collected her belongings and left without a word spoken.
She said that during her stay in Paris she had witnessed evening parties at Brunel’s apartment where “very young” girls, from east and central Europe, appeared in the company of older men. One of these, she said, resembled Epstein.
Huisman’s and Brock's accounts resembled others given by American models to an episode of CBS current affairs programme 60 Minutes broadcast in 1988. The programme is not available online, but Mediapart has gained access to extracts of the interviews. One of those interviewed, whose identity was concealed, said she had been invited to Brunel’s Paris home in the company of some of his friends. She said a powerful hallucinogenic drug was slipped into her drink, and that Brunel encouraged her to take a bath. “I started hallucinating and at first I was very confused, it was very scary,” she told the reporter, Diane Sawyer, “because if you don’t know that you’ve been drugged and you start hallucinating that’s very scary.” She said she managed to leave the house but remained disorientated for 24 hours.
Another woman, a former US model whose identity was also concealed, described how she had gone to Brunel’s home several years earlier, when she was given a drink and then blacked out. “I don’t remember anything after that,” she said. The next thing she said she did remember was “being in this man’s bed”. Pressed, she said “It was Jean-Luc”. Asked if she was raped, she replied: “I do know that. I am positive. I know.” She said a “lot of people” knew about Brunel’s behaviour. “Everyone continues to deal with him, I don’t know why.”
Sawyer interviewed a third model who appeared with no disguise, and asked what happens if a model says no to Brunel’s advances. “I paid the penalty for saying ‘no’”, the model replied. “I was proposed to himself, Jean-Luc, and I said ‘no way’, I laughed – and I had no more appointments, and I never worked.”
At the time, Brunel refused to be interviewed by CBS, but insisted that he firmly denied the allegations made by the models. In 2015, he announced he intended to take legal action over the allegations of his participation with Epstein in sex parties. In a statement issued then on his behalf by a French public relations agency, Brunel said: “I strongly deny having participated, neither directly nor indirectly, in the actions Mr Jeffrey Epstein is being accused of,” adding: “I strongly deny having committed any illicit act or any wrongdoing in the course of my work as a scouter or model agencies manager.”
Despite Mediapart’s numerous attempts to contact him, and also those of other media, Brunel, now aged in his 70s, has offered no public response to the latest detailed accusations levelled at him.
Interviewed by BFMTV on August 21st, Brunel’s French lawyer Joe Titone said: “I have spoken to Jean-Luc. He’s doing well, he’s in good health. I won’t go into detail concerning these accusations. Personally, I don’t have more information. I have suggested to Jean-Luc that he speaks to the media to re-establish his reputation.”
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If you have information of public interest you would like to pass on to Mediapart for investigation you can contact us at this email address: enquete@mediapart.fr. If you wish to send us documents for our scrutiny via our highly secure platform please go to https://www.frenchleaks.fr/ which is presented in both English and French.
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- The French version of this re-published article can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse