The Paris Prosecutor's Office investigates one of the most powerful men in the fashion world for rape

Gérald Marie in 2001, when he was the president of the French branch of Elite and organized the famous Elite Model Look model contestPASCAL GUYOT / AFP

The facts, if confirmed, have probably prescribed, but that has not prevented the Paris Prosecutor's Office from deciding to open a preliminary investigation against the former director for Europe of the Elite modeling agency, Gérald Marie, whom four women accuse of rape and sexual abuse in the 1990s, when the Frenchman was one of the most powerful men in the modeling world.

The investigation is for "rape and sexual assault, as well as rape and sexual assault against minors," the Prosecutor's Office told Agence France Presse on Monday.

On Friday, the

newspaper

had revealed that four women had denounced Marie, who ran the European branch of what was the world's leading modeling agency, founded by John Casablancas and Alain Kittler in 1971 in Paris.

Among those represented were the

of the

in the golden age of modeling, Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer, Cindy Crawford and Linda Evangelista, who came to be married - briefly - to Marie, who in statements to the

has rejected all the accusations against him.

The alleged abuses would have occurred between the 80s and 90s of the last century and therefore in principle have already prescribed, but the French Prosecutor's Office usually advocates opening an investigation in these cases, even when it knows that it will not be able to press charges, to give the except for a response to the complainants, so that "there are no forgotten victims," ​​the Paris prosecutor, Rémy Heitz, justified this practice in February.

This has also happened in notorious cases such as that of Vanessa Springora, the author of The Consent, the book that has profoundly shaken the

French literary and intellectual

this year

with its denunciation of the relationship it had with the writer Gabriel Matzneff in the In the 1980s, when he was 50 and she was just 14. In 2018, the French Government amended the law against sexist violence to extend the statute of limitations for a rape of a minor under 15 years from 20 to 30 years, but this change was not It applies retroactively, so the Springora case has prescribed, despite which the Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation in which it is also looking for other possible non-prescribed cases, as could now happen with Marie's file.

“I hope this research allows other (women) to have the courage to speak up.

It is an encouraging first stage and a relief for the victims, ”she said of the case against former Elite director Anne-Claire Lejeune, a lawyer for one of the complainants.

The women who accuse the now septuagenarian, who in the last decade has run another modeling agency Oui Management, are the journalist Lisa Brinkworth, who at the end of the 90s posed as a model to investigate for the BBC the suspicions of sexual abuse in the world of modeling agencies, and three more models.

Jill Dodd, Carré Otis-Sutton and Ebba Karlsson have also joined the court action, claiming that Marie demanded sexual favors from them when they were, respectively, 19, 17 and 21 years old, according to

.

Dodd and Sutton claim to have been raped in Marie's apartment where they lived for a season, while Karlsson has reported a digital violation in Marie's office, about whom suspicions of abuse were planned in the past, but never reached Justice.

In fact, after the BBC published its documentary on the sexual abuse of models and aspiring mannequins, Elite announced the resignation of two of its indicated leaders, one of them Marie, although a few days later she returned to give them their positions while presenting a. Defamation complaint against the British chain, which ended up closing an amicable agreement with Elite to avoid going to trial.

It is not the first time that the world of French fashion has been rocked by a scandal of sexual abuse.

Last year, the Paris Prosecutor's Office also opened another investigation related to the Epstein case and that had in its sights a former French collaborator of the American financier, Jean-Luc Brunel, founder of the modeling agencies Karin Models and MC2 Model Management .

Brunel had been singled out for having sent the American sexual predator, who committed suicide in his cell in New York in 2019 while awaiting trial, to three young French women as a "surprise anniversary gift."