Former model Carré Sutton sues Gérald Marie over rape accusation

Ex-model Carré Sutton has filed a lawsuit alleging that Gérald Marie, the French former modeling agency boss, repeatedly raped her at his Paris apartment when she was just 17 years old.

The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Manhattan federal court, also maintains that Sutton was “trafficked by Marie to other wealthy men around Europe”.

Related: ‘He wanted to control me completely’: the models who accuse Gérald Marie of sexual assault

Sutton is filing her lawsuit under New York state’s Child Victims Act, a law that permits survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue their attackers, regardless of how long ago they were abused. The deadline for filing claims under this act ends at midnight Friday.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s many accusers, filed suit against Prince Andrew in New York on Monday under the same law. Giuffre says Andrew sexually abused her at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion, as well as other locations, in 2001 when she was 17. The prince has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Sutton is one of many women who have accused Marie of sexual assault while he helmed Elite Model Management’s European operations. French authorities are investigating their claims, and have previously invited 11 women to Paris to meet investigators.

Marie’s attorneys have previously responded to allegations against him by saying he was “extremely affected by the accusations made against him, which he contests with the utmost firmness … He intends to actively participate in the manifestation of the truth within the scope of the opened criminal investigation.”

Elite Model Management’s founder, the late John Casablancas, has also been accused of repeatedly engaging in abusive and exploitative sexual conduct, announcing, for example, that he was dating a 16-year-old model.

Sutton, an actor and former model, claims that she fell prey to Marie shortly after she became involved with the now-defunct talent agency. At age 16, she was “discovered by a modeling agent with connections to Elite in New York City” – when she was a living on her own in California’s Bay Area.

“I was from a broken family, and I had turned toward modeling because I was a runaway teen and had dropped out of school,” Sutton said at a press conference on Friday. “Looking back, it is so clear to me that my background was part of what made me vulnerable to abuse and to trafficking.”

After sending photos to Elite, the agency flew her to New York City for modeling. She arrived there in 1986, at age 17, after learning that Casablancas “was interested in her”.

Elite housed Sutton in a “models apartment which was shared with five other young models” and “was given a small stipend which barely covered food”. When Sutton failed to receive any paid photo shoots, Casablancas said “her look was not making the cut” and that he would only give her one additional week “on his dime”.

Trudi Tapscott, then an Elite agent, comforted the distraught Sutton following Casablancas’s warning, “telling her that it was OK if she did not make it because she would be sent from New York to another one of Elite Europe’s agencies like Milan or Paris”. Within days, Tapscott told Sutton that Elite was sending her to Paris.

Right after Sutton’s arrival, she was brought to Marie’s office, where he told her that she would succeed with Elite – but warned that she had to be obedient in order to do so. He allegedly slapped her on the buttocks and said: “On my dime, I don’t want your opinion, Carré. I want your obedience.”

Marie started providing her with cocaine at his apartment – which he shared with his then girlfriend, supermodel Linda Evangelista – telling Sutton that it would let her lose weight and succeed as a model. The sexual assaults started one night after a modeling shoot, Sutton’s suit states.

Sutton became distant from Marie but stayed obedient, as she needed him for her survival in Paris. “Every time Evangelista left the apartment, defendant Marie expected plaintiff to let him rape her which he did repeatedly over the span of months,” her suit charges.

During this period, Sutton says that Marie would traffic her to “wealthy men in Europe for purposes wholly unrelated to modeling”. Once, she was sent to a Milan modeling agency that “used its models for Playboy parties”.

“The shock and dissociation of the attack stayed with me for many, many years. I had to become tough and truly dissociate to survive what happened to me in Paris, from the initial ongoing assaults and then to be looked at as an object in the industry,” Sutton also said at the press conference.

The suit claims that Tapscott and other Elite employees were well aware of Marie and Casablancas’s behavior. At Marie’s Ibiza, Spain home, Tapscott “was heard telling Marie and Casablancas to leave the 13- and 14-year-olds alone”, court papers state.

When asked for comment on the suit Friday morning, Tapscott sent a text stating: “No comment.”

Tapscott previously said: “I was only a little bit older than the models, and also taken in by the glamour. We didn’t have the language then to know that this was wrong, and even if we did, who would we report it to? We were like a family and there was no HR department; this was the culture that protected these men. I have tremendous regret about not doing more at the time.”

There is no indication that Evangelista knew about any of these allegations and has praised the “courage and strength” shown by Marie’s accusers. Evangelista, who married and ultimately divorced Marie, has said: “Based on my own experiences, I believe these women are telling the truth.”

Sutton says that she filed the lawsuit “on behalf of all the other survivors” who cannot pursue claims. She also says she did so “in hopes that other survivors who are within the statute … feel that there is safety in coming forward”.

She is among a group of survivors who have advocated for the Adult Survivors Act which, similar to the Child Victims Act, would extend the statute of limitation for civil complaints for those sexually abused as adults.

While the New York senate approved the Adult Survivors Act this year, the proposal did not proceed in the state assembly.

“As has been made clear to me with the resignation of Andrew Cuomo and his aides, no predator acts alone,” Sutton said, in reference to the departing New York governor, who announced his resignation this week amid allegations of sexual misconduct. “There are enablers and institutions created to insulate them from the consequences of their actions. Three decades later, when I finally feel ready to access the justice system, I am shut out across the globe – except for the state of New York.”

“That’s why the civil look-back windows are so crucial, and in New York, we need the Adult Survivors Act and why the CVA is so crucial. My case has been filed just as the look-back window ends today, along with the case against Prince Andrew.”

Lesa Amoore, a top model in the 90s who said that Marie sexually assaulted and harassed her, commented: “This is a big day and a first step. Standing in solidarity with Carré, I believe all victims of sexual abuse deserve the opportunity to file a case. The fact that many of the same abusers and enablers are still in the fashion industry today that were when I was a model is a major problem”.