ANGELA WEISS
The president of the European division of Elite Model Management has been accused in court filings of raping models. Carré Otis, Mickey Rourke’s ex-wife, alleged in the filing that Gérald Marie raped her in Paris when she was 17 years old. Ex-model Jill Dodd also accused Marie of raping her in France when she was 20 years old, and Swedish model Ebba Karlsson says she was “traumatized” when he sexually assaulted her in 1990, according to The Sunday Times. Formal criminal proceedings against Marie, who is Linda Evangelista’s ex-husband, have yet to be launched, but the allegations have been submitted to a prosector. “We still have perpetrators in the industry and it has to stop. I have daughters. I don’t want them to have to grow up and normalize any amount of sexual harassment or sexual assault in their lives,” Otis told the Times. “I would like to tell other victims and survivors that telling my story was pivotal to me. It was so important for me to find my voice and trail-blaze. It involved a lot of tears and processing and a lot of healing too.”
Marie has denied the claims, saying, “It would not be appropriate for me to comment at this time on the allegations of historic wrongdoing being made against me, other than to make it clear that I categorically deny them.”