Six women, most of them American nationals, filed a complaint in Paris on Wednesday for rape and human trafficking against Gérald Marie, former head of the flagship top model agency Elite, their lawyer, Me Mathias Darmon, told AFP.
These six complaints, with the constitution of a civil party, are “in line with the complaint of June 5, 2026 filed by Carré Ottis” in Paris, explained Me Darmon, confirming information from the newspaper Le Parisien.
Aged 57, the American, former star model of the 1980s and 1990s, accuses Gérald Marie of “rape of minors committed when she was 17 years old” and “trafficking in human beings”.
All foreign nationals, the six plaintiffs are demanding prosecution of the former European director of Elite, now in his seventies.
They are aged approximately 45 to 60 years old and one of them was a minor at the time of the alleged events, their counsel said.
In the complaints filed with the dean of investigating judges of the Paris judicial court, the “concurring statements” of the complainants are highlighted.
“Gérald Marie, then director of an international modeling agency with a major presence in Paris, would have, for several decades, used the position of authority, influence and power conferred on him by his functions in order to obtain sexual relations imposed on numerous young women, some of whom were minors at the time of the events”, it is stipulated.
The “facts denounced” are “exceptionally serious”, particularly in view of “their repeated nature”, it is underlined.
Some of these six women had filed a first complaint in 2020 or 2021 but others “are coming forward for the first time, without ever having filed a complaint before,” assured Me Mathias Darmon.
Asked by AFP, Me Céline Bekerman, lawyer for Gérald Marie, stressed that her client “categorically contests these accusations, today as yesterday”.
She affirms that “these allegations” have “already been examined as part of an in-depth investigation carried out by the Paris prosecutor’s office”.
“There is no reason to mobilize justice again to return, almost forty years after the alleged facts, to a case that is both time-barred and closed,” denounced Me Bekerman, before adding: “By repetition, this amounts to harassment.”
In 2023, the Paris prosecutor’s office dismissed the complaint by former BBC journalist Lisa Brinkworth against Gérald Marie for statute of limitations.
Carré Otis, ex-member of the exclusive supermodel club (alongside Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Cindy Crawford), assures that the alleged events took place at Gérald Marie in the mid-1980s, in the absence of his partner at the time, the top model Linda Evangelista.
