分类： society

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.

PARIS — A wave of public anger and blame has swept across France this week, following the suspected killing of 11-year-old Lyhanna, a missing schoolgirl whose disappearance after classes on May 29 has riveted national attention and ignited fierce scrutiny of systemic failures within the country’s judicial system.

The outcry comes after six days of intensive searches carried out by law enforcement officers and civilian volunteers across southwestern France, where Lyhanna was last seen. Authorities confirmed Thursday that the body of a child, dressed in clothing matching what Lyhanna wore the day she vanished — a black-and-white striped top, black shorts, and yellow socks emblazoned with artwork from the popular Japanese manga *One Piece* — was discovered in an isolated, rural section of a farm in the Gers region. An official autopsy has been ordered to confirm the identity and cause of death.

The main suspect in the case, a 41-year-old man who is already in police custody, was identified via security camera footage: he was recorded near Lyhanna’s school in the small town of Fleurance, and later seen driving with the child in his vehicle, according to local French media reports. The suspect has told investigators he dropped Lyhanna off near the local municipal swimming pool, a claim that has not been independently verified.

Most disturbing to the public is the revelation that multiple prior complaints of sexual violence, including allegations of rape against the suspect, were filed by underage girls and their families years before Lyhanna’s disappearance. Clémence Meyer, chief prosecutor for the Gers region, confirmed this week that a 2020 allegation that the man raped a minor at his home was investigated, with medical examinations and witness interviews completed, but the case was ultimately dismissed in 2024 due to what officials called insufficient evidence.

When Lyhanna vanished, the suspect was already the subject of an open, active rape investigation stemming from allegations by another minor, who claims he repeatedly assaulted her at his home between 2024 and 2025. That case has been delayed for months as it bounced back and forth between different regional legal jurisdictions. A third allegation of child rape against the suspect was filed just this week, Meyer added.

French President Emmanuel Macron broke with long-standing protocol to comment on the domestic tragedy during an official visit to Montenegro on Friday, joining the widespread national dismay over the case. “Things didn’t happen as they should have done. That is clear. And so it is unacceptable,” the president stated. “We cannot look her family in the face and say everything went well.” Macron acknowledged that the tragedy has exposed dangerous, systemic cracks in France’s child protection and judicial frameworks, saying he was “shocked” by the series of missed warnings.

In response to the public outcry, the French government has launched a full internal investigation into the mishandling of prior complaints against the suspect. Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin outlined the scope of the probe Thursday, saying officials will examine multiple critical failures: the prolonged delays in transferring casework between jurisdictions, the continued reliance on paper rather than digital information sharing that slowed communications, apparent failures by law enforcement to follow up on existing orders, and the core question of why multiple red flags over the course of months did not trigger intervention.

“It’s completely unacceptable,” Darmanin said. “We are all terrified by this malfunction.” He added that the case lays bare deep institutional flaws: “it reveals our poor organization and without doubt, the fact that at the Justice Ministry and elsewhere, we don’t take the words of children seriously.”

A years-long investigation into one of Ireland’s most tragic chapters of institutional abuse has marked a grim new milestone, as archaeological teams working at the site of the former Tuam mother-and-baby home in County Galway have recovered eight additional sets of infant remains, pushing the total number of bodies recovered to 77. The update, published in the latest progress report from the Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention, Tuam (ODAIT), the government-appointed body leading the excavation that launched in July 2025, covers fieldwork conducted across April and May 2026.

The newly recovered remains were found in intact coffins in an area along the site’s western edge. Historical records have long labeled this patch of land a burial ground, but no above-ground markers were ever placed to indicate the presence of graves below the surface. Beyond the 77 full sets of remains recovered to date, manual test excavations have also uncovered what lead experts describe as compelling evidence pointing to additional unmarked graves sized for children or infants, suggesting far more remains will be uncovered as work progresses.

Excavation teams have also begun moving into a long-unexamined subterranean vaulted structure on the site. Initial geological and historical analysis indicates this structure was originally built as part of a wastewater management system for a 19th-century workhouse that operated on the land between 1841 and 1918, decades before the mother-and-baby home opened. ODAIT has confirmed it remains unclear whether this drainage system was still in active use during the home’s 36 years of operation from 1925 to 1961. Alongside the full sets of infant remains, teams have also recovered scattered isolated bones from both adult and infant individuals that are not associated with the already cataloged burials. Forensic scientists are currently conducting radiocarbon and contextual testing to determine whether these remains date back to the home’s operational period or originate from the earlier workhouse era.

One of the site’s most high-profile areas of interest, the existing memorial garden where 2017 preliminary investigations detected large quantities of human remains in underground chambers, has not yet undergone full excavation. ODAIT is proceeding with careful planning to avoid disturbing the existing memorial before full scientific excavation begins there.

To support the critical work of identifying the recovered remains, ODAIT has been collecting DNA samples from living relatives of people who were resident at the Tuam home. The agency has added 22 new family samples to its database in recent months, bringing the total number of reference samples to 55. ODAIT teams have even traveled across the diaspora, meeting with family members and Irish community organizations in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada to collect these samples, as many former residents and their descendants emigrated from Ireland in the decades after the home closed.

The Tuam mother-and-baby home was operated by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Roman Catholic religious order, on land owned by Galway County Council, and was built specifically to house unmarried pregnant women and their children. The site first captured global public attention in 2014, when local independent historian Catherine Corless made a groundbreaking discovery: she found official death records for 796 children and infants who died at the institution between 1925 and 1961, but could find no official documentation of where those bodies were buried.

In the years following the public revelation of the mass unmarked burials, both institutional custodians of the home have issued formal apologies. The Bon Secours Sisters acknowledged that the children and infants interred at the site were buried in a “disrespectful and unacceptable way” and have contributed €2.5 million (£2.14 million) to cover the costs of the excavation. Galway County Council also issued a public apology in 2021 following the release of the official national inquiry report, admitting it failed in its duty to protect the vulnerable mothers and children housed at the site.

Excavation work at the Tuam site is scheduled to continue through 2027, with forensic identification, archival research, and follow-up scientific work expected to take several additional years to complete.

A wave of outrage has swept across France following the confirmed murder of 11-year-old Lyhanna, a tragedy that has exposed catastrophic gaps in the country’s justice system after revelations that the primary suspect had long been flagged as a danger to children.

Lyhanna went missing shortly after leaving her school in the rural Gers region of southwestern France one week ago. On Thursday, search teams located a body on agricultural land near the small town of Fleurance, which authorities have confirmed is that of the missing girl, concluding a days-long large-scale search operation that mobilized hundreds of local officials and volunteers.

The main suspect in the case, 41-year-old Jérome B. — father of one of Lyhanna’s classmates — has been held in police custody since Monday. Two independent witnesses have placed the girl in his vehicle on the same afternoon she disappeared, linking him directly to her abduction.

As the community grapples with shock and collective grief, the case has rapidly escalated into a major national political scandal after official disclosures laid bare Jérome B.’s long history of red flags for child harm that were never acted on by authorities. Over recent years, he has been named as a person of interest in four separate incidents involving underage girls. Two of these investigations were closed prematurely due to insufficient evidence, while Jérome B. was ultimately fired from his position as a maintenance worker at a local secondary school for documented inappropriate behavior toward a teenage student.

It is the fourth, unresolved complaint, however, that has triggered national fury. Last August, the mother of 10-year-old Rosa filed a formal police report alleging that Jérome B. had raped her daughter on multiple occasions. Medical examinations later confirmed the child’s account of abuse, yet in the nine months between the filing of the complaint and Lyhanna’s murder, investigators never once called Jérome B. in for questioning.

France’s judicial system has long been criticized for crippling bureaucratic delays, and in this case, administrative backlogs were compounded by a confusing transfer of the case between two separate legal jurisdictions. What has most appalled the French public, however, is that multiple clear warning signs about Jérome B. were ignored entirely. Authorities prioritized rigid procedural adherence over removing a known potential threat from contact with children, systemic failures that directly led to Lyhanna’s death.

With France’s presidential election less than 12 months away, political figures across the ideological spectrum have seized on the tragedy to condemn the current government’s handling of public safety and judicial reform. Jordan Bardella, president of the far-right National Rally party, wrote on social media platform X that “the French people demand a reckoning. This terrible tragedy could have been avoided if the justice system were not so dysfunctional.”

Bruno Retailleau, a senior leader of the center-right Les Républicains party, echoed the criticism, saying, “Our justice system is a failure, it should be totally reformed. A society that is incapable of protecting its own children is a society which will one day start turning against itself.”

On the left, Marine Tondelier, head of the French Ecologists party, framed the killing as a “symbol of a politico-judicial system incapable of handling the issue of sexist and sexual violence.”

Incumbent President Emmanuel Macron has publicly acknowledged the systemic failures that led to the killing, admitting that “it is clear” that there were unforgivable missteps. “It is unacceptable. We cannot look Lyhanna’s family in the face and say this was properly handled,” Macron said.

Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin also acknowledged the gravity of the failures, saying he was “terrified” by what the investigation has uncovered. “It is fair to ask why a man who was so obviously the object of suspicions was not kept away from youngsters… Why did no-one act, even though for months there had been complaints against him?” Darmanin told reporters.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has formally ordered a full audit of the case, with investigators required to submit a full public report outlining all procedural failures within 15 days.