Carré Sutton: She speaks about allegations against Gérald Marie

Several women have made serious allegations against Gérald Marie in recent years. The former boss of a model agency and ex-husband of Linda Evangelista (57) is said to have raped young models. Some of his alleged victims, including Carré Sutton (53), formerly Carré Otis, are now speaking in a new documentary.

“He basically imposed himself on me and raped me,” in Scouting For Girls: Fashion’s Darkest Secret. She was scared and devastated at the time. When the 53-year-old was just 17, Marie raped her multiple times in a Paris apartment, Sutton alleges in a lawsuit. According to media reports, the French authorities had previously invited eleven women to meet with police investigators.

Sutton Marie, who denies all allegations, would like to be “face to face” in the courtroom, she explains to Sky News. Evangelista, who divorced Marie in 1993 and claims to have known nothing about it during the relationship, praised the “courage and strength” of the women who publicly accuse her ex-husband in 2020. Based on the statements and her own experiences, she believes the models.

Sutton would not let her daughters work as a model

“I don’t think criminals just flip a switch,” says Sutton now. She believes there were other victims. “The reason I came forward is because I have daughters.” She doesn’t want them to see anything like that as normal, which she’s been doing for a long time. The fashion industry is a “completely unregulated industry that mainly works with minors and young adults”. The fact that the industry is the only one not controlled is “outrageous”.

Sutton wants justice, she tells Sky News. She wants change in the industry, protecting the rights of people working in the fashion industry, equal rights and “healing what happened to me and so many other survivors who were completely innocent”. She would not allow her 13- and 15-year-old daughters to become models.

In the documentary, she claims that people in the fashion industry were complicit in abusing young models. For example, she was sent to photo shoots in the private homes of photographers who are said to have been known as “perpetrators” and asked her to undress. “It was totally normal,” says Sutton. Especially less well-known models are often victims of attacks.

Jill Dodd also claims that she was raped by Marie in Paris in 1980 when she was 20 years old. Another model, Shawna Lee, says Marie molested her in 1992 when she was 15.

But allegations are not only being leveled against Marie, but also against Jean-Luc Brunel, a confidant of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was found dead in his cell in 2019. Like Epstein, Brunel, a former model agency boss, was found dead in a cell in a Paris prison in February. Marianne Shine claims that Brunel raped her in 1980. She also recalled an incident with a photographer who said that if she didn’t sleep with him, she wouldn’t get her pictures. And when she complained to her agent, the only answer she got was that she shouldn’t be like that. Incidents like this happened all the time.