Overview
- Carré Otis, a former top model now in her late 50s, filed a criminal complaint in Paris accusing Gérald Marie, ex-Europe director of Elite, of rapes she says occurred in 1985–86 when she was 17.
- Otis's complaint includes claims of repeated sexual violence and human trafficking and was lodged with the Paris investigating judge as a formal denunciation of industry abuse rather than primarily to secure a prosecution.
- French law’s statute of limitations means the alleged acts are widely reported as time-barred, shaping the filing’s symbolic aim to publicise patterns of harm rather than to guarantee criminal charges.
- Gérald Marie, through his lawyer, has denied the rape allegations and says he never had a consensual intimate relationship with Otis, while his counsel notes earlier probes of similar claims were closed without charges.
- The complaint follows a March petition by fifteen former models asking French justice to probe Marie and alleges evidence of links with Jeffrey Epstein, a development that could widen inquiries into institutional failings in the fashion world.