I was genuinely surprised when masses of people woke up last month realising that President Trump was in the Epstein files.
How a 15 year best-friendship with a convicted pedophile escaped them perplexed me, particularly when many of his supporters were so focused on stopping child predation and trafficking, that global cabal they were determined to take down.
There are different types of sexual abuse and trafficking, all horrible and irredeemably evil. The Epstein case gets attention, because it was an elite trafficking ring with a preference for youth and beauty. The narrative of Ghislaine Maxwell jumping out of a town car in Manhattan to recruit schoolgirls shouting, “I’ve got to get the Nubiles”, as described by Maria Farmer, certainly sticks and makes an impression, as does “stealing” massage therapists from Mar-a-Lago.
And yet, an even bigger conveyor belt of young beautiful women and girls, one with a seeming endless supply, was set up in a far more reliable and insidious way, through the international model agencies.
As a top model in the 1980s and 1990s, I experienced firsthand the way the industry works. The lure of glamor, travel, money and escaping a hometown or poverty itself attracts many teenage (and yes underage) girls. Bright-eyed and blessed with certain genes, girls by the thousands want to make it out of their circumstances and into an exciting lucrative lifestyle.
Reputable agents maintain businesses supplying fashion’s creative side with models for magazine spreads, ads, catalogs and catwalks, all very necessary for the industry’s engine to run. But some agents were known to mix seediness with legitimate business. I remember my mother asking my first agent in New York, a woman who had headed Wilhelmina, if she was running an escort service. I winced, hoping my mother hadn’t sabotaged my chances; this woman assured my mother she was not.
The top agents function as an integral part of the fashion machine and only make money that way. Or so I told myself for years. Yet, when I look back, particularly while I was writing my memoir MEN and Me Too, I did start to question the entire enterprise.
Gatekeeping agents dictated who you met, if you worked and how much money you made. Jobs were funnelled to some girls above others. And fancy dinners often provided introductions to wealthy men who had nothing to do with fashion. Which begs the question, “Why the men?”
One of my survivor sisters, Jill Dodd, was introduced to Adnan Kashoggi in the early 1980s and entered a relationship with him for quite a while. She found out later that her agency, Paris Planning, had been paid $50,000 for the introduction.
Eileen Ford set me up with Dodi Fayed, who I dated casually for a couple months. I have no proof she was paid anything, and I had great respect for her as an agent…and yet I wonder now, years later and after hearing Jill’s story, if she was merely playing friendly matchmaker.
Karen Mulder, a super model in the 1990s, said she was trafficked to and raped by Prince Albert of Monaco. She made this and other disclosures to a live TV studio audience in France. She was immediately put in an institution for the mentally ill by her agent, Gerald Marie, who was heading Elite in Europe. Gerald Marie also happens to be my predator, and Jill Dodds’, and 14 other women who have come forward.
So, what does this have to do with Trump?
I believe this system of trafficking beautiful girls out to elites and wealthy businessmen was inherently part of the modelling industry. And some agents made it an integral part of their business model focusing on when models are most vulnerable, in the very beginning of their career.
Here’s the playbook: get young naïve girls, house them like cattle in rooms with bunk beds, charge them for everything so they run up a debt, and then when they don’t work and the pressure rises, introduce them to older wealthy men. Paolo Zampolli, who ran ID Models, was known to specialise in getting girls over from Eastern Europe to New York on questionable visas. One of his models was Melanija Knavs who met Donald Trump at the Kit Kat Club in an evening arranged by Zampolli.
Jeffrey Epstein zeroed in on models and abused many who were in or trying to enter the business. I have a model friend who was represented by Zampolli and one night taken to a black-tie function and sat next to Jeffrey Epstein, whom she saw after on and off, but never got entangled with him, despite his efforts.
Epstein exploited the Victoria Secret connection he had with Les Wexner when talking to young girls, saying he could get them work. It is also reported he walked into agencies like Next Model Management in New York regularly and funded MC2 with Jean-Luc Brunel, a highly successful agent and scout, originally running Karin Models in Paris. He and Epstein opened MC2 Model Management in Miami and New York, ensuring their power over vulnerable new models.
Virginia Guiffre described Epstein saying he slept with over 1000 of Jean Luc’s girls. Of course, both men’s lives notoriously ended in their respective prisons.
Other modeling industry players with questionable appetites and business practices were John Casablanca from Elite and Gerald Marie who ran his European operations. Casablanca held Look of the Year competitions, which Trump helped judge. Underage girls were asked to dance for Donald and other judges on a boat tour despite it not being part of the competition. And it was well known that Donald Trump in the 1980s and 1990s enjoyed proximity to models when and where he could.
Then in 1999, after years being in the orbit of these men, their global competitions, and girls desperate for a break, Donald dove right in and opened his own agency, Trump Model Management. It was reported by Reuters his businesses requested US visas for almost 250 girls. The agency had mixed reviews from fashion insiders, with the “new faces” division launching only a handful of successful models.
And some models sued Trump for not keeping promises after bringing them in on H-1B visas and overcharging them for accommodation and other fees while not supplying work.
The fact that models have been used, abused and trafficked by the agents that held power over their careers is a verified reality. The question is who are the culprits, historical and current; and will they ever have to answer for their crimes?