Today I'm writing to ask you to support a comprehensive federal investigation into the modeling industry's role in facilitating Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation, as requested by Model Alliance and more than three dozen Epstein survivors and fashion models.
Evidence from public records, survivor testimony, and investigative reporting shows that Epstein's trafficking operation intersected directly with modeling agencies and executives who introduced him to young women and girls. Modeling executives sent models to Epstein and his co-conspirators.
Recruitment schemes used fake modeling opportunities to lure young women to predators. These patterns raise serious questions about whether the modeling industry functioned as a recruitment pipeline for Epstein and other wealthy abusers.
This is a $2.5 trillion global industry that has operated with minimal oversight for decades while exercising sweeping control over children and teens as young as 14.
Survivor Lara Blume McGee put it plainly: the same people who controlled access to opportunity also put young people directly in harm's way.
New York State, at the center of the fashion industry, just passed the Fashion Workers Act to regulate model management agencies, proving reform is possible.
A Federal investigation is the necessary next step to ensure accountability extends beyond individual abusers to the system that enabled them. Thank you.
First sent on April 15 by Mark
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