TESTIMONY
It is an important day in the Epstein affair: Tuesday, Ghislaine Maxwell, the ex-collaborator of Jeffrey Epstein arrested on July 2, appeared for the first time in New York for trafficking in minors. Suspected of having helped the American financier to sexually assault very young women, she pleaded not guilty. In one of the French ramifications of this sprawling case, the ex-Dutch model Thysia Huisman accuses the French Jean-Luc Brunel of rape, in 1991. With Europe 1, she delivers her version of the facts and describes the grip that this friend of the Epstein-Maxwell couple had on her.
Brunel's "two faces"
"It was in 1991, I was 18 years old," she recalls at the microphone of Europe 1. "My modeling agency in Belgium had sent me to work at Jean-Luc Brunel's, and had told me to stay with him, in his apartment. I thought it was weird, of course, but my agency encouraged me by saying that it could do a lot for my career. I stayed there for a week. there were evenings with lots of rich gentlemen and very young women who mostly came from Eastern European countries. They seemed super young to me. "
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Jean-Luc Brunel, a modeling agent now in his seventies, is accused of sexual assault and of having played the "touts" for Jeffrey Epstein. "He had two faces. He could be very professional, very kind, arrange things professionally for me and, at night, he became a completely different person", continues Thysia Huisman, who speaks of "harassment". "He kept saying 'you know, one night, we're going to sleep together'. When I arrived the first day, I asked where I was going to sleep and he replied 'in my bed!' I said no, and he didn't say anything else, I stayed up for hours before I ended up sleeping in another model's room on the floor. "
"I felt ashamed and dirty"
The ex-Dutch model tells her version of the rape facts which she accuses the friend of the Maxwell-Epstein couple: "At the end of the week, we went out and when we got home, he gave me a glass, a kind of cocktail, and after drinking it, I felt really weird, the sounds were different. He said to me 'come and rest in my bed'. (…) I remember it was blurry, that he pushed me onto his bed and ripped my clothes off. The next day, I woke up naked in bed, with bruises on my legs and a kimono that I did not know on my shoulders. When I realized what had happened, I felt so bad, ashamed, and dirty. I left without saying goodbye, I took the first train to Brussels. The following days, I was really bad and I didn't feel myself. "
" It was obvious to me that I had the same thing with Brunel as some with Weinstein ""What I regret the most," she confides, "is that I haven't been complained. I tried to speak to my agent in Brussels but she made fun of me and m said it was unprofessional to have left Paris. " Over 25 years have passed and women's voices on gender-based and sexual violence have become clear in many circles: "Three years ago, with #MeToo, it was obvious to me that I had the same with Jean-Luc Brunel as some with Harvey Weinstein. I did therapy. Then I did some research and I saw that I was not alone, and it was terrible to see that there were so many other women, after me, that he supplied to Epstein! I was very angry, everyone knew, like my agency in Brussels. Everyone looked elsewhere! "
A dozen women heard, a site created
In France, according to Le Parisien , a dozen women were heard by the police from the Central Office for the Suppression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP) as part of the investigation opened in France by the Paris prosecutor's office. "I hope that the investigation will move, because they say they are investigating, but they have not even heard Brunel yet," regrets Thysia Huisman, while the facts for these people heard are prescribed. For the moment, the modeling agent has not been summoned by the justice system.
"Now we are trying to motivate other victims to speak, perhaps more recent victims, so that the police are forced to do something and hear it," she underlines. The GetBrunel.com site ("Catch Brunel") was also created to encourage other victims, whose facts would not be prescribed, to speak.