A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 19 , 2019
“I’ve never forgotten it,” she
said. “He said, ‘One of these days
Zoe, we are going to have to have
sex together,’ and he pushed a
plate of cocaine toward me.”
She said she took the drugs but
began avoiding him. Her model-
ing agency soon told her she
wasn’t allowed to stay with
Brunel anymore, which she as-
sumed was because she wasn’t
willing to go to bed with him. Her
mother, Brigid Brock, confirmed
her account of what happened
with Brunel in an interview, say-
ing her daughter told her what
happened a few years later.
Years later, after the New York
Times published its 2017 investi-
gation into alleged sexual mis-
conduct by Hollywood producer
Harvey Weinstein, the ex-model
was moved to action. She pub-
lished an online column on Oct. 7
alleging that Weinstein was sexu-
ally aggressive with her in his
hotel room in the late 1990s dur-
ing the Cannes Film Festival. A
representative for Weinstein de-
nied the allegation.
Eleven days after the Wein-
stein column, she again post-
ed online — this time about how
Brunel had propositioned her
and offered her drugs.
“I have no faith in the system at
all anymore,” said Brock, now 45
years old. “There is not a day that
goes by when I don’t think of the
culpability of society as a whole —
how the entertainment industry,
the fashion industry, the model-
ing industry — everyone has a
history of looking past things and
still working with these people
and inviting them for dinner.”
Allegations against Brunel
were also publicized in Gross’s
book, a New York Times bestseller
that was republished most re-
cently in 2011.
The book describes how little
was done to curb Brunel’s behav-
ior after the CBS report, quoting
named fashion executives accus-
ing the Frenchman of continuing
to mistreat and assault mod-
els. Jérôme Bonnouvrier, an
agent who died in 2009, called
Brunel a “danger” and said
girls “are with him because he’s
the boss.”
“His problem is that he knows
exactly what girls in trouble are
looking for,” he added.
Six years after the book’s publi-
cation, model Michelle de Swarte
became stranded in New York
City after the Sept. 11, 2001, ter-
rorist attacks. She was affiliated
at the time with Brunel’s agency,
Karin Models, and was told it had
a plan to get her and some other
foreign models out of the United
States.
“We were told that there is
someone who has a private jet
who can fly us out of New York but
he wants to meet us first,” recalled
de Swarte, who was born in Lon-
don.
That someone was Epstein. De
Swarte said she didn’t know
whether it was Brunel’s idea or
someone else’s at the agency to
send her to Epstein’s mansion on
the Upper East Side.
De Swarte, who was 20 at the
time, said Epstein looked past her
and focused on a young, Eastern
European model who spoke little
English. Epstein, sitting on a
chair in the middle of the room,
pulled the girl de Swarte believed
to be a teenager onto his lap, she
said.
“He beelined for the person
who looked the most skinny,
small, young and vulnerable and
she didn’t know how to say no,” de
Swarte said.
She left shortly afterward. De
Swarte said she doesn’t know
whether any of the girls took
Epstein up on his offer. “I would
rather stay in New York with the
potential threat of another terror
attack than get on a plane with
this guy,” de Swarte recalled.
She separately complained to
her agency about “touchy feely”
behavior from Brunel, who she
said had a habit of rubbing her
earlobes.
Representatives for the agency
did not respond to requests for
comment.
Brunel lived for a time in an
apartment Epstein owned in New
York City, according to testimony
by Vasquez, who worked as a
bookkeeper for Brunel from 2003
to 2006. She said Epstein was
financially supporting Brunel’s
new agency and its young, largely
foreign models with housing and
visas. Asked what Epstein got out
of the arrangement, Vasquez said,
“The only thing that I can think
he was getting was the girls.
Nothing else.”
Vasquez said she told Brunel
that as a mother, she was uncom-
fortable when he brought girls
under 18 to Epstein’s parties.
He responded, she said, “I’m
the father.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Lisa Rein, Julie Tate, Alice Crites and
Devlin Barrett contributed to this
report.She said Brunel’s apartment
was frequently filled with older,
wealthy businessmen surround-
ed by a crowd of young Eastern
European models who she be-
lieves were younger than 18.
One night, less than a week
after Huisman arrived, she said
she accepted a drink that Brunel
said he had mixed for her. She
said that her vision blurred and
that she remembers the rest of the
night only in fragments: Brunel
pressing her down on his bed, the
heaviness of her arms, being un-
able to push him away, the sound
of him ripping her blouse, Brunel
pulling her legs apart.
After that, she said, she passed
out. She woke up the next morn-
ing naked, her body partly cov-
ered by a kimono that didn’t
belong to her. Her inner thighs
were bruised, she said. Disorient-
ed, she quickly packed her be-
longings and fled the apartment
for the train station.
“I felt so so dirty and guilty,
ashamed that this happened to
me,” said Huisman, who didn’t
report the incident to police. “I
thought it was my own stupid
fault.”
She’s grown angry after learn-
ing of the well-publicized allega-
tions against Brunel years before
her modeling agency sent her to
Paris. “The whole fashion indus-
try was more than willing to work
with him, and he’s been entangled
in scandals for decades,” she said.
“And I feel also partly to blame. I
never told my story. I was scared.”
Huisman’s boyfriend, Wouter
Gras, told The Post recently that a
few months after they began dat-
ing nine years ago, Huisman said
she had a bad experience in Paris
with a modeling agent. Gras said
that about two years ago, Huis-
man began talking about her for-
mer agent in therapy and told
Gras that Brunel had raped her.
After Epstein was arrested in
July, Huisman said she called an
FBI tip line to report her experi-
ence with Brunel and that she
might have seen Epstein among
the businessmen at Brunel’s
apartment. She said she is also
willing to speak to French law
enforcement about Brunel.
“I hope he stops, finally,” she
said. “I hope he has some kind of
sentence, that he’s punished for
what he did to a lot of girls.”
Around the same time Huis-
man arrived in Paris in 1991,
17-year-old model Zoë Brock was
also there, far from her home in
New Zealand. She hadn’t heard
about the “60 Minutes” broad-
cast, either, and didn’t know bet-
ter when her modeling agency
sent her to live with Brunel. “My
mother was told I would be safe
there,” Brock said in an interview.
She said one day Brunel sum-
moned her into his bedroom.notified Brunel that she will not
send him any new models unless
this matter is all cleared up.”
Ford died in 2014.
“The ‘60 Minutes’ program was
a foundational investigation into
sex abuse in the fashion industry
— 30 years before #MeToo,” said
Craig Pyes, who worked as a
producer on the episode and in-
terviewed the women off air. “The
program hit the modeling indus-
try like a bomb... but the indus-
try has a short attention span.”
Brunel praised the news out-
let’s track record in Gross’s book
and said his career suffered as a
result of the report. Yet he contin-
ued to work in the modeling
industry, as young aspiring mod-
els who had not seen the Ameri-
can news program continued to
be sent to his Paris apartment.
They experienced a similar pat-
tern of behavior by Brunel, two
women told The Post, in which he
pressured them to use drugs and
have sex with him.
Three years after the CBS
broadcast, 18-year-old model
Thysia Huisman met Brunel at
her agency in Brussels. “He said
he had a great future for me in
Paris and that he could make my
career,” she said in a recent inter-
view from Amsterdam.
Huisman, now 46, said she was
discomfited when Brunel offered
to let her stay at his apartment.
She said that her modeling agen-
cy told her only “special girls”
were offered such an opportunity
and that Brunel would take care
of her while she was far from
home.
She arrived in Paris in Septem-
ber 1991 with no friends and one
backpack of clothes. She said
when she asked Brunel where she
would sleep, he suggested his bed.
She said she chose the floor of
another model’s room.
“Every night, every day, he
would make jokes. ‘We’re going to
have sex for sure,’ ” she recalled.the suit he later filed against the
financier.
After Epstein pleaded guilty in
2008 to soliciting a minor, Brunel
was among those who visited him
during his time in the Palm Beach
County jail, records show.
Epstein’s butler Janusz Bana-
siak said in a 2010 deposition that
Brunel and Epstein were
“friends” and that Brunel had
stayed at Epstein’s home in Palm
Beach three times in the seven
months since Epstein had been
released from jail and had begun
serving house arrest, cooking for
himself in Epstein’s kitchen and
swimming in Epstein’s pool.
By then, the allegations against
Brunel had been circulating for
more than 20 years.
In a transcript of the “60 Min-
utes” program obtained by The
Post, correspondent Diane Saw-
yer interviewed two models, in-
cluding Powell, about the dinner
parties they said Brunel pushed
them to attend with his male
friends. “It’s a meat market,” said
Powell, who came to Paris from
the tiny town of Stoneboro,
Pa. “You are there for the purpose
of somebody wanting to take you
home to bed.”
Powell also said Brunel asked
her to have sex with him. After
rejecting him, she said, modeling
jobs dried up.
An unidentified woman whose
face was shadowed, according to
the transcript, told Sawyer that
Brunel routinely offered her co-
caine and that on one occasion,
she believed he had slipped a
hallucinogen into her drink. An-
other model whose face and voice
were disguised said Brunel
drugged and raped her.
“Jean Luc Brunel declined to
give us an interview, but [model-
ing agency chief ] Eileen Ford said
Brunel denied to her the allega-
tions against him,” Sawyer said in
the broadcast. “Despite that, how-
ever, she told us that she hasfor comment.
Testimony in Epstein-related
lawsuits alleges that Brunel’s
modeling business served as a
pipeline of underage girls for Ep-
stein.
Giuffre has claimed in a sworn
declaration filed in court that she
had sex with Brunel multiple
times at Epstein’s direction and
that Epstein told her he slept with
“over 1,000 Brunel girls.” Brunel’s
former bookkeeper, Maritza
Vasquez, said in a sworn state-
ment filed in court that Brunel
would bring girls as young as 14 to
Epstein’s parties and that Epstein
paid for foreign visas and
housed Brunel’s models rent-free
in New York City. She said she had
reviewed supporting documents,
but they were not submitted in
court.
Court records also show
Vasquez was fired from Brunel’s
agency in 2006 and convicted of
stealing from the firm. In a depo-
sition cited by Brunel’s lawsuit
against Epstein, Vasquez said she
never saw her boss act inappro-
priately with models or heard
complaints about him.
Vasquez could not be reached
for comment. A lawyer who previ-
ously represented her declined to
comment.
Evidence submitted in the
sprawling cases documents the
two men’s frequent contact. Be-
tween 1998 and 2005, the names
“Jean Luc Brunel,” “Jean Luke” or
“JLB” appear 25 times in flight
logs for Epstein’s private plane,
headed to destinations where he
owns homes, including New York,
Paris, Palm Beach, Fla., and the
Virgin Islands.
Handwritten phone messages
recorded by Epstein’s staff in the
period before the financier’s 2006
arrest show Brunel called Epstein
often around the same time Palm
Beach police were tipped off to
Epstein’s alleged abuse of minors.
One April 1 message from
Brunel read: “He has a teacher for
you to teach you how to speak
Russian. She is 2 x 8 years old not
blonde. Lessons are free and you
can have 1st today if you call.”
Another undated message from
Brunel said: “He just did a good
one — 18 years. (She spoke to me
and said ‘I love Jeffrey.’)”
In 2004, Epstein and Brunel
were spotted together by former
Sports Illustrated swimsuit mod-
el Stacey Williams at a New York
party hosted by the magazine.
Williams said she steered clear of
the men because they had made
her feel uncomfortable in past
encounters. “My blood ran cold.”
she said.
The two also had a financial
connection. When Brunel invest-
ed $1 million in a new modeling
agency in 2005, he did so with a
loan from Epstein, according towho allegedly abused dozens of
minors; one, Virginia Roberts
Giuffre, has said in court docu-
ments that Epstein pressured her
to have sex with Brunel when she
was a teenager.
“It completely boggles my
mind how it’s possible that
[Brunel] could be caught on the
radar... and then nothing would
come of it,” Powell, now 50 years
old with two daughters, told The
Post.
Justice has been elusive for
Brunel’s alleged victims, as it has
been for the women who accused
Epstein of abuse only to see him
serve just 13 months in jail a
decade ago. The possibility that
new sex trafficking charges
against Epstein would mean seri-
ous punishment for the 66-year-
old financier evaporated after of-
ficials determined he killed him-
self in his federal jail cell on Aug.
10.
Prosecutors in New York, how-
ever, have said they plan to con-
tinue examining people who
might have enabled Epstein’s al-
leged behavior. Emboldened by
the #MeToo movement, which
seeks to expose powerful and
abusive men, Brunel’s accusers
are calling for law enforcement to
investigate the 72-year-old mod-
eling scout and whether he
helped Epstein procure girls.
They say Brunel has been hid-
ing in plain sight for decades,
even after allegations that he as-
saulted women were aired on
television in 1988, in a 1995 book
by Michael Gross called “Model:
The Ugly Business of Beautiful
Women” and years later, in the
court documents related to the
Epstein case.
Through his attorney Joe
Titone, Brunel didn’t answer de-
tailed questions this past week
about allegations of sexual as-
sault and misconduct with mi-
nors. Titone said he was commu-
nicating with Brunel over phone
and email but didn’t know where
his client is located.
Brunel has responded to the
allegations in the past. In 2015, he
sued Epstein, contending that
“false stories” about their rela-
tionship had sunk his modeling
agency.
The same year, he said in a
statement to the New York Daily
News, responding to Giuffre’s al-
legation: “I strongly deny having
participated, neither directly nor
indirectly, in the actions Mr. Jef-
frey Epstein is being accused of. I
strongly deny having committed
any illicit act or any wrongdoing
in the course of my work as a
scouter or model agencies man-
ager.”
Brunel’s career dates to 1978,
when he has says he founded
Karin Models, a prominent Paris
agency that he left more than a
decade ago to start a new firm.
The French online publication
Mediapart recently called Brunel
“an aging playboy... known in
Paris for his love of partying, his
luxury cars and his designer
pants.’’
Brunel has traveled the world
looking for beautiful girls, living
at times in Paris, New York and
Miami Beach, records show. He
has said he “discovered” top mod-
els such as Christy Turlington and
Milla Jovovich — claims their
representatives denied to The
Post.
Turlington said she met Brunel
in 1983, when she was 14 years
old. She said she and other mod-
els would occasionally stay in his
apartment on Avenue Hoche in
Paris.
“Staying there was nicer than
some hotels and I considered it a
perk,” Turlington said in an
email. “I was always the youngest
person in the room back then and
no one was ever inappropriate
with me.”
Turlington said she was “horri-
fied” by the “60 Minutes” broad-
cast a few years later.
In Gross’s 1995 book about the
fashion industry, Brunel ac-
knowledged having sexual rela-
tions with models. “You get laid
tonight with a model, is that a
crime?” he asked. “I’m no saint.”
But he also said he had “never
messed with the girls of the agen-
cy.”
The Epstein case has generated
a tangled web of civil lawsuits
that have revealed glimpses into
Brunel’s past and his friendship
with the American financier.
One of the only known efforts
to force Brunel to answer ques-
tions about Epstein came in one
of those suits in 2009, when he
was subpoenaed to give testimo-
ny by a lawyer representing al-
leged Epstein victims.
Rather than be deposed,
Brunel said he left the country
“on the direct advice of Epstein,”
according to the complaint he
filed against Epstein. That suit
was dismissed by the court be-
cause Epstein was not properly
notified.
Epstein attorney Martin Wein-
berg did not respond to a request
EPSTEIN FROM A
For accusers of modeling agent, justice remains elusive
MDP-ROBERT ESPALIEU/STARFACE/POLARIS“60 MINUTES”/CBS
AT TOP: Modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel, who has been
accused of sexual misconduct for decades, is seen with
models in Paris in 2001. ABOVE: On “60 Minutes” in 1988,
Courtney Powell describes her experience with Brunel.