– at the time the European boss of the leading modelling agency Elite – who was previously married to supermodel Linda Evangelista. Marie was one of Brunel’s rivals, but the pair reportedly “exchanged” models between their businesses and frequented the same parties and clubs in Paris. Brunel told Gross on a tape that will be heard for the first time in the new documentary: “[There are] a lot of other ones that you don’t see, that you don’t hear … Gérald is 100 times worse than I am.
Soerensen says Brunel told her she would be rewarded if she went along with his requests. “He said if I was good enough at these sexual things, he could send me to people who could really help build my career.” But Brunel soon “seemed to understand I had no interest in him and proceeded to set me up on ‘appointments’ with his cronies”. From that point, she says, “there was always this expectation that we’d be available to whoever of his playboy friends were there”.
Soerensen only realised lately that one of the men she was ‘pimped out’ to was Brunel’s friend Jeffrey Epstein.Soerensen says she was staggered to discover that IMG continued sending young models to Brunel in Paris after that. She says this is why she feels it’s important she speaks out now, “because too many people are complicit”. IMG declined to comment for this article.
In 2006, the authorities caught up with Epstein and arrested him in Florida. He spent just 13 months in a Florida jail after pleading guilty to procuring an underage girl for prostitution. Brunel visited Epstein in jail no fewer than 67 times. One night he called her into his bedroom, offered her cocaine and told her that “one of these days” they would have sex, she says. She took the cocaine but avoided him after that. However, she was soon told she could no longer stay at Brunel’s apartment, which Brock believes was punishment for refusing his advances.n February 1996, 17-year-old schoolgirl Leandra McPartlan-Karol was invited to Paris to work for Brunel at Karin.
Soon afterwards, she had the opportunity to model in New York. However, when Brunel found out, he locked her in her room: “He basically kidnapped me for three days because he didn’t want me to leave Paris.” She says Brunel’s maid would bring meals to the door. “My dad had to get on the phone with Jean-Luc and my agent in Oklahoma, and they had to negotiate my release.” McPartlan-Karol says she was too embarrassed to tell her parents about the rape.