Models who say they were victims of the fashion industry’s rape culture are fighting for change

In 2017, the entertainment industry was rocked by sexual assault allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, which led to the #MeToo movement. Now the fashion industry is facing a similar reckoning.

CBS News spoke with five former models who all claim that a top modeling agent assaulted and assaulted them during the 1980s. They are now lobbying governments to provide greater protections for women in the industry.

In 1980, Jill Dodd, a 20-year-old from Los Angeles, was working as a model in Paris when she says she was raped by the boss of her modeling agency.

“I couldn’t get away, and he had his hands on my hips, and when he was done, he just went to sleep, and I was laying there crying,” she said. “I went home just in absolute shock, just comatose, just catatonic.”

Wendy Walsh, of Toronto, says the same agent raped her when she was just 18 years old.

“He was my boss,” she told CBS News. “I trusted him because he told my mother that he would take good care of me.”

EJ Moran, of Chicago, says the same man raped her the following year, when she was 22.

“He threw me on the bed, covered my face with his hand, started calling me names. He turned into a monster,” she recalls.

All the women CBS News spoke to are from North America. They all worked as models in Europe in the 1980s and all say they were raped or sexually assaulted by Gerald Marie — a man who spent decades at the top of the European modeling industry.

In total, 16 women have reported to French authorities accusing Marie of rape or sexual assault, but none of them went to the police at the time. Due to France’s statute of limitations, which sets a deadline for prosecuting cases, Marie cannot be charged.

“I thought about going to the police, but I didn’t know how to speak French,” Moran told CBS News. “I didn’t think I had a chance. I thought if I went to the police, they wouldn’t believe me.”

Marie has long denied the allegations against him. Men in positions like his are “easily attacked,” he complained on a French talk show in 1999 after some allegations came to light.

In a statement to CBS News, Marie’s lawyer said he “categorically denies the allegations” and claims the women are trying to “frame” him as a “scapegoat… for an era that is now over.”

“I think part of it was the culture,” said Laurie Marsden, who claims Marie tried to rape her after she went to work in Paris as a 19-year-old model. “It was the culture in France, but it was also the culture of the industry itself. I often wonder why young women were expendable? They seemed to look at us that way.”

Sara Ziff, who runs a nonprofit advocacy group called the Model Alliance, told CBS News that the era isn’t over, however, and not much has changed since the 1980s.

“There haven’t been meaningful changes to really strengthen the models and make sure they’re safe from this kind of abuse,” she said. “This type of abuse is likely to occur because the industry is largely unregulated.”

“Almost every day the Model Alliance hears from working and aspiring models about a variety of issues, including cases of sexual assault and even trafficking schemes,” Ziff said, adding that some of the women are too scared to go to the authorities. .

She said that in an industry where people often start work as young teenagers, there is “an imbalanced power situation from the start, so it’s certainly not surprising that people are then afraid to speak up”.

Some of Gerald Marie’s accusers are fighting for change. They have lobbied the French Senate and the European Parliament to change the statute of limitations and do more to protect women.

Emily Mott is one of the former models seeking these changes, and she said it hasn’t been an easy fight.

“One of the French legislators, the senators we worked with, said she didn’t want to change the statute of limitations in France because that would be like hanging a sword of Damocles over these people’s heads, and it wasn’t.” it’s fair,” she told CBS News. “We’re saying enough is enough.”

Walsh, the former model from Canada, told her it seems the industry has become even more dangerous “because it’s not unionized, it’s not organized — there’s no laws around it. Agents traditionally haven’t protected these young women, now they’re just in Instagram and are more open to predators.”

“If you work in the fashion industry, you can fly alone on a private jet to someone’s island and work in the hot sun all day, use alcohol as a weapon in the evening and get raped at the end of the day. Where are the guidelines?” asked Walsh. “Where are the laws?”

Marsden agreed that little has changed, “and in fact, in some respects, it could potentially be worse.”

Ziff, of the Model Alliance, stressed that the fight “isn’t about a bad actor. It’s about a system of abuse, and until we have a meaningful change — we have, like, basic legal rights at work, I don’t Think the dynamic is really going to change in a meaningful way.”

The French lawyer representing the 16 accusers told CBS News that there are more women who claim they were assaulted by Marie but have yet to come forward to authorities.