[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
Jean-Luc Brunel, the French modeling agent who was accused of supplying underage women to Jeffrey Epstein, has been found dead in his Paris prison cell.
On Saturday, the 76-year-old reportedly died by suicide inside his jail cell at La Santé where he had been since December 2020, awaiting trial for sexual assault and sex trafficking. Per the French news outlet Le Monde, Brunel was found hanging in the cell by guards during a nighttime check – eerily similar to the way Epstein himself died.
Related: Prince Andrew Sexual Assault Settlement Is HUGE! And The Queen Is Covering How Much?!
According to The Guardian, the model scout was the founder of Karin Models but was later banned from the agency in 1999 following an investigation from BBC investigation into the company’s abuse. He then moved to America, where he connected with Epstein who helped fund Brunel’s MC2 Model Management. At the time, Brunel allegedly helped the late financier procure women and underage girls. In 2015, Virginia Roberts Giuffre also claimed that Brunel was one of the high-profile men Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein forced her to have sex with. She also accused him of using the modeling agency to get girls and “farm them out to his friends, including Epstein.” Giuffre added in the lawsuit, per The Daily Beast:
“A lot of the girls came from poor countries or poor backgrounds, and he lured them in with a promise of making good money. Jeffrey Epstein has told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls, and everything that I have seen confirms this claim.”
According to CNN, French prosecutors started investigating Brunel in 2019. And in December 2020, he was arrested at Charles de Gaulle airport while attempting to board a flight to Dakar in Senegal on counts of “rape and sexual assault, rape and sexual assault on a minor under 15, rape and sexual assault on a minor over 15, sexual harassment, criminal associations, and human trafficking to the detriment of minor victims for the purposes of sexual exploitation.” Per the outlet, prosecutors then officially put him under investigation in France in June 2021 for “rape of a minor over 15.” Several models who worked with him in Paris have also come forward to accuse him of sexual assault and rape, which Brunel previously denied the allegations.
And now, French police have opened up an inquiry into Brunel’s death. His attorneys Mathias Chichportich, Marianne Abgrall, and Christophe Ingrain told CNN that their client’s “decision was not guided by guilt, but by a sense of injustice.” They continued:
“Jean-Luc Brunel has never stopped claiming his innocence. He has multiplied his efforts to prove it. A judge had released him a few months ago, and then he was re-incarcerated in undignified conditions.”
When Epstein was found hanged in 2019, conspiracy theories started circulating that he was murdered – which have continued to this day despite the medical examiner ruling it a suicide. Given the shocking similarities here, Brunel’s death is sure to generate even more theories.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741, or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
[Image via New York Sex Offender Registry]
:quality(85):upscale()/2023/05/11/976/n/1922564/782262e2645d6b967847b4.74342194_.png)
