Jean-Luc Brunel, modeling agent suspected of recruiting girls for Jeffrey Epstein, arrested

Modeling mogul Jean-Luc Brunel, a close associate and one-time business partner of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, has been arrested in France and is being held for questioning on numerous rape and sexual trafficking charges, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced Thursday..

Brunel was arrested Wednesday at Paris Charles De Gaulle airport trying to go to Senegal and has been held for questioning by the special victims unit in Paris.

Jeffrey Epstein associate was trailed by sordid allegations for decades. Cops ignored it

Brunel has long been accused of enabling and participating in Epstein’s abuse of girls and of using the promise of modeling work to lure in underage victims. His detention marked the start of legal woes for another member of the mysterious Epstein’s one-time inner circle.

“I am so happy with this news and cried tears of joy,” said Thysia Huisman, a former Dutch model who said Brunel drugged and raped her in Paris in 1991. “Finally, after so long, Brunel will hopefully be brought to justice. This is more than I hoped for, justice for all his victims”

Epstein and Brunel were both friends and business partners, with Epstein providing Brunel a $1 million line of credit to help fund Brunel’s MC2 Model Management agency, which was headquartered in Miami Beach.

When in New York, Brunel, and the agency’s models, would stay in a building largely owned by Epstein’s brother Mark, and Brunel flew on Epstein’s private plane 25 times between 1998 and 2005, according to flight logs. Brunel visited Epstein in the Palm Beach County Jail when he was serving his 13-month sentence for soliciting a minor for prostitution.

Epstein’s sexual abuse was the subject of the Miami Herald investigation Perversion of Justice, which examined how Epstein had been able to obtain his extraordinarily lenient sentence in 2008 in Florida. The renewed scrutiny of Epstein led federal prosecutors in New York’s Southern District to bring new sex charges against him in July 2019. Epstein was found dead in his New York jail cell one month later. This year, federal prosecutors in the Southern District brought four charges of sex trafficking of a minor and two charges of perjury against Epstein’s longtime partner Ghislaine Maxwell, and they have indicated that their investigation into Epstein’s alleged crimes is ongoing. A spokesperson for the Southern District declined to comment on whether they have participated in the French investigation into Brunel and whether they have asked for him to be extradited to the United States.

Brunel helped run the New York office of the famed Karin Models agency throughout much of the 1990s, and was a fixture at fashion parties and other events where he rubbed shoulders with Hollywood elites and even a future president, then-developer Donald J. Trump. The White House had no immediate comment on Brunel’s detention.

“I screamed and did the touchdown dance in my front seat. This is really a personal story, he’s definitely personally affected me,” said Heather Braden, who modeled in the early 1990s for agency Next, where Brunel was an investor, and alleges he attempted to “gift” her to powerful men. “This man has been like a dark shadow and a phantom. He is the bogeyman.

The Frenchman, born in 1946, claimed that he had launched the careers of numerous top models, such as Christy Turlington, Jerry Hall and Milla Jovovich.

But by the time he started MC2 Management in Miami, which was incorporated in 2003, according to state records, others in the modeling world said he was more focused on recruiting young girls to be abused than legitimate modeling work.

Maritza Vasquez, the former bookkeeper for MC2 management, previously told the Herald that the agency would house women in both Miami and New York who were not really models, but were instead taken to parties at Epstein’s mansions in Palm Beach and New York.

“The only reason Mr. Epstein was involved was because of the girls, I think, because it was not a profitable business,” Vasquez told the Herald.

McClatchy, the Miami Herald and the French publication 20 Minutes had been working together for months on a joint investigative report into Brunel. That joint effort led to interviews with more than half a dozen women who shared stories about the Epstein colleague, ranging from inappropriate touching and raunchy behavior to outright rape.

Julie K. Brown reported from Miami. Berry reported from Los Angeles, Hall and Wieder from Washington, D.C., and Vantighem from Paris.

EDITORS NOTE: McClatchy, the Miami Herald and the French national daily 20 Minutes have been collaborating on an investigation into Brunel and are reporting the story jointly.