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Courtney Soerensen: Fake meeting with "top film agent" Epstein
Photo: The Washington Post / The Washington Post via Getty Images
"It was like a Renaissance image: underwear, nudity, cocaine, people were having sex." This is how former model Lynn Wales recalls the scene she saw in the Paris apartment of powerful French agent Jean-Luc Brunel in 1982 had observed.
"It was like an orgy," Wales says in retrospect.
The Scot was 14 years old at the time. Like many other girls and young women, Brunel had promised her advertising campaigns for the fashion company Benetton, which was popular at the time, and cover shoots for the fashion bible »Vogue«.
But hopes for glamor quickly faded when Wales arrived in Paris.
What she found when she first visited Brunel was a luxury apartment "filled with old, fat men."
Brunel, the heart of the abuse network?
Wales is one of six women the British "Guardian" has their say in a comprehensive report published on Saturday to shed light on the systematic abuse in the fashion industry.
The focus of the research is Jean-Luc Brunel, who has been head of the influential agency Karin Models since 1978.
For the author of the report, the journalist Lucy Osborne, Brunel clearly embodied the heart of a network in the fashion industry environment that is far from being sufficiently illuminated.
This network also included the US multimillionaire and financial investor Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in August 2019 as a result of the abuse scandal involving him.
Brunel also committed suicide in prison: on February 19 of this year he was found dead in his cell, having previously been in custody for 14 months on charges of rape and sexual harassment.
He has always denied being part of Epstein's sex ring.
The report in the Guardian now refutes this claim.
Californian ex-model Courtney Soerensen also has a say. She was 19 when she met Brunel in France in 1988.
She says that she was not only subjected to his attacks, but that he also tried to introduce her to his influential friends as a kind of pimp.
Epstein as fake producer
This is also how she got to know Epstein, who was introduced to her as a “top film agent”.
Soerensen, now 53, remembers meeting the multimillionaire in his luxury apartment on the Champs-Élysées.
Accordingly, Epstein had a video man with him to fake a test recording.
"First I have to find out if you're good at kissing and passionate enough," Epstein reportedly said to Soerensen.
"We're preparing a movie with a lot of love scenes, so we need to make sure you have the right body and you can show us what you're capable of."
more on the subject
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Soerensen was able to save himself by fleeing the apartment.
The incident shows how closely Brunel's modeling agency was linked to Epstein's cosmos.
They first met through the mediation of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later convicted as a confidante of Epstein as an accomplice.
In the 1990s, the connection between Epstein and Brunel solidified.
According to the Guardian, apart from Maxwell, no one else flew so often in Epstein's private jet, known as the Lolita Express, in the early 2000s.
Brunel later built up the US branch of the Karin agency with his rich friend's money.
Among other things, Epstein is said to have guaranteed Brunel's company with a loan worth millions.
Brunel is said to have used the money primarily to pay for visas and trips for foreign models – which he was then able to bring back to Epstein at parties and arranged meetings.
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