PARIS – In a bold move intended to break long-standing silence around systemic abuse in the global fashion industry, 58-year-old former American supermodel Carré Otis has submitted a formal criminal complaint to a Paris court, accusing Gérald Marie, the one-time European head of Elite Model Management, of rape and human trafficking. Though legal barriers mean Marie will not face prosecution in Otis’s specific case, legal representatives for the model say the filing is designed to pave the way for other alleged survivors to step forward and join the legal action.
Marie, a 76-year-old French national who oversaw Elite’s European operations from 1985 to 2010 — a decades-long stretch when the agency controlled a dominant share of the international modeling market and launched the careers of dozens of the world’s most recognizable supermodels — has repeatedly denied all allegations against him.
Under French criminal law, the statute of limitations for alleged sexual abuse committed against a minor expires 30 years after the victim reaches adulthood, meaning claimants must file by their 48th birthday. Otis’s previous 2021 complaint, which she joined alongside multiple other former models who accused Marie of rape and sexual assault dating back to the 1980s, was dismissed by courts on the grounds that all claims had exceeded the legal time limit.
The latest complaint, reviewed by the Associated Press, brings formal charges of rape of a minor and human trafficking against Marie. Court documents detail that in 1986, when Otis was just 17 years old, Elite Model Management sent her to Paris to pursue her modeling career. She was placed in Marie’s personal apartment, believing the arrangement was part of the agency’s support for new rising talent. According to the allegations, Marie raped Otis repeatedly during her stay, before coercing her into being trafficked to other wealthy men across multiple European countries. Otis also never received any compensation for the modeling work she did during that period, the complaint adds.
Mathias Darmon, Otis’s lead attorney, confirmed in an official statement to the AP that even with the statute of limitations barring prosecution for Otis’s own claims, the new filing creates a formal legal pathway for other survivors to join the proceedings, regardless of whether their own claims are time-barred. “The goal is to give other victims the opportunity to find the courage to join our complaint,” Darmon said. “We are opening the door for all those affected by this internationally significant case to come forward and have their voices heard.”
In comments reported by French public broadcaster France Info on Friday, Otis framed the complaint as a broader denouncement of the pervasive, decades-long culture of sexual exploitation of young models that ran rampant through the global fashion industry, drawing explicit comparisons to the fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal that exposed systemic exploitation of vulnerable young people by powerful figures. Otis rose to global fame as a supermodel in the late 1980s and early 1990s, gracing the covers of major fashion publications including *Elle*, *Vogue*, and *Vanity Fair*, and featuring in the coveted annual Pirelli calendar.