Minister calls for Epstein's French connections to be probed despite prison death

RT
Mon, 12 Aug 2019 16:26 UTC

Jean Luc Brunel at a fashion competition MC2 Agency organized in Peru in 2017

Sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's connections in France need to be investigated by the nation's law enforcement, the French minister for gender equality said. Epstein died in US custody last week by alleged suicide.

The US investigation into Epstein's alleged sexual abuses of minors was undermined by the disgraced financier's death in a US jail. But it uncovered enough evidence involving France that merit a national investigation, Gender Equality Minister Marlène Schiappa said in a statement on Monday. Such a probe would be "fundamental for the victims" and will also help prevent sexual predation in the future, she argued.

Epstein died in what the authorities called an apparent hanging suicide while being held in custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York. He was charged with sexual exploitation of minors as young as 14.

The death may be a relief for many powerful people around the world, who allegedly partook in Epstein's sexual predation dating back to at least 2002. Previously he was convicted for paying for sex with an underage girl and given an 18-month prison sentence.

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The online outlet Jezabel wrote in 2010:

These accounts from Michael Gross' 1995 book Model describe Brunel's activities in Paris from the late 1970s onwards, when he worked for, and eventually owned, the modeling agency Karins, now known as Karin Paris:

"Jean-Luc is considered a danger," says Jérôme Bonnouvrier. "Owning Karins was a dream for a playboy. His problem is that he knows exactly what girls in trouble are looking for. He's always been on the edge of the system. John Casablancas gets with girls the healthy way. Girls would be with him if he was the butcher. They're with Jean-Luc because he's the boss. Jean-Luc likes drugs and silent rape. It excites him."

"I really despise Jean-Luc as a human being for the way he's cheapened the business," says John Casablancas. "There is no justice. This is a guy who should be behind bars. There was a little group, Jean-Luc, Patrick Gilles, and Varsano...They were very well-known in Paris for roaming the clubs. They would invite girls and put drugs in their drinks. Everybody knew they were creeps."

It should be noted that aside from being a professional rival, Casablancas, the founder of the agency Elite, was eventually drubbed out of the industry for his own modelizing. How pervy do you have to be for John Casablancas to call you a perv?

Pervy enough to drug and rape numerous teenagers, according to 60 Minutes and Diane Sawyer, who investigated Brunel in 1988. The program interviewed nearly two dozen models who said they had been sexually assaulted by Brunel and/or by his fellow agent, Claude Haddad. Even at that time, Brunel had a reputation as a man one could go to to procure a "date" with a young model. CBS spoke to five models who said that Brunel and/or his friends had drugged and raped them. Said producer Craig Pyes, "Hundreds of girls were not only harassed, but molested."

When Gross interviewed Brunel, this is what he had to say for himself:

"You get laid tonight with a model, is that a crime? I don't understand why people go into your personal life, what you do yourself, and to yourself, and they don't look at things that are really important."

Since then, Brunel has been involved with a succession of agencies in New York and Paris. Although the 60 Minutes scandal eventually led Eileen Ford to stop working with him, he continued his involvement with Karins. In 1988, when powerhouse agency Next opened its doors, Brunel took an ownership stake. He also "discovered" Christy Turlington when she was 14. MC2 is only his latest venture. Because no criminal charges were ever filed by any of his accusers, and because the industry has a short memory — most models working today weren't even born when Sawyer and Pyes started looking into Brunel's activities — Brunel has been free to continue as he pleases. A French citizen, he even avoided testifying in his friend Epstein's trial.

And so Brunel is still criss-crossing the globe, trawling for 5'10" 13-year-olds from Eastern Europe and (the whiter parts of) South America. And apparently taking the occasional ride with them on Epstein's private jet. Is there any better argument for the regulation of the modeling industry?