French model agent Jean-Luc Brunel, suspected of playing the role of tout for American billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and accused of rape by several former models, was indicted Friday evening and remanded in custody, announced the Paris prosecutor on Saturday.
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The septuagenarian, arrested and placed in police custody Wednesday at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport when he was about to fly to Dakar, was indicted Friday evening for “rape of minors over 15 years old” and “sexual harassment,” said prosecutor Rémy Heitz in a press release confirming information from the Parisian.
Mr. Brunel was placed under the intermediary status of assisted witness for the facts of “trafficking in human beings aggravated to the prejudice of minor victims for the purposes of sexual exploitation”, also the subject of this mirror investigation of the investigations of the American justice on the sex scandal involving Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019.
“This is what the victims have been waiting for for many years, some for more than 30 years,” responded lawyer Me Anne-Claire Lejeune, who defends several plaintiffs. “This indictment materializes the words of the victims and gives meaning to what they have said all these years,” added the lawyer.
Almost disappeared from the radar for years, Mr. Brunel has been accused in the United States by at least two women of having played the tout for Jeffrey Epstein, bringing to the United States “young girls” from modest backgrounds by making them dangle jobs in modeling.
Billionaire financier, Mr. Epstein was indicted in July 2019 in the United States for having organized, between 2002 and 2005, a network of young girls that he would have sexually exploited. He committed suicide in his New York prison in early August 2019.
Alerted by the potential existence of French minors among the victims of Jeffrey Epstein, the Paris prosecutor’s office opened a preliminary investigation in August 2019 and was interested in the role of Mr. Brunel, himself founder of the agencies Karin Models and MC2 Model Management.
Several former models then came out of the silence to directly accuse Mr. Brunel of rape.
A complaint had in fact been filed in October 2019 against Mr. Brunel for acts of “sexual harassment” which were not prescribed, contrary to several charges against him.
Through the voice of his lawyer, Jean-Luc Brunel said he was “at the disposal of justice” in October 2019 and contested the charges.