Even if we knew nothing of the subjects, it would still be a tawdry snap. Having loosened her blouse mid-air, a grinning middle-aged woman flashes her cleavage at two puffed-up tycoons basking in the luxury of a private jet.
At best, it might be said that it must have seemed like good fun at the time, a carefree moment between intimate friends. This, though, was Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein and Jean-Luc Brunel – a more repellent triumvirate it is hard to conceive.
Of the first two – Maxwell the sex trafficker, Epstein the paedophile – little remains unsaid, but the alleged atrocities of the third, French model agency boss Brunel, had not yet seeped into public consciousness before he was found hanged yesterday.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein and Jean-Luc Brunel pictured on a private jet together
Not only was he said to have raped minors, Brunel also offered modelling jobs to girls as young as 12 and took them to the United States to ‘farm them out to his friends, especially Epstein’.
In a 2015 affidavit, Virginia Giuffre – Prince Andrew’s sex abuse accuser – claimed that Brunel ‘could get dozens of underage girls and feed Epstein’s (and Maxwell’s) strong appetite for sex with minors’. Often the girls were from ‘poor backgrounds’ and were lured with ‘a promise of making good money’.
As the police net closed on the clique surrounding Epstein, his French friend simply vanished, just like Maxwell. None close to him were surprised given he was nicknamed Le Fantôme (The Ghost). ‘He was always secretive, always difficult to pin down,’ recalled one friend.
Then in 2020, as he was about to board a Paris flight to Senegal, he was finally captured.
In Epstein’s inner circle, the unease was palpable. Prince Andrew must have been particularly rattled, since it was reported at the time that French investigators wanted to question him about his own links to Brunel.
‘Are you sweating yet, Prince Andrew?’ Ms Giuffre wrote on social media. ‘You should be. Your buddy Jean-Luc Brunel is behind bars.’
Virginia Giuffre – Prince Andrew’s sex abuse accuser – claimed that Brunel ‘could get dozens of underage girls and feed Epstein’s (and Maxwell’s) strong appetite for sex with minors’
She said that she had sex with Mr Brunel several times when she was between the ages of 16 and 19 and that she had been forced to have sex with Prince Andrew three times when she was 17, which he has always denied.
Brunel began his career as a talent scout before becoming head of the Karin Models agency in Paris. He became a member of Epstein’s inner circle in the early 2000s.
In 2004, Epstein invested up to a million dollars in the launch of Brunel’s modelling agency, MC2 Model Management, based in Miami Beach, Florida.
A year later, Brunel sued Epstein, claiming that his business lost millions of dollars ‘due to the adverse publicity surrounding Epstein and his illegal activities,’ and ‘publicity falsely linking [him]… with sex trafficking’.
Brunel also complained that he was ‘emotionally destroyed’ and fell into a deep depression as a result of Jeffrey Epstein’s actions.
In reality, however, the two men were best of friends and frequently flew around the world together.
When Epstein was first jailed in 2008 for soliciting a minor, the Frenchman visited him behind bars.
At the time of his own arrest, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that Brunel was detained as part of an investigation into accomplices of Epstein.
‘Are you sweating yet, Prince Andrew?’ Ms Giuffre wrote on social media. ‘You should be. Your buddy Jean-Luc Brunel is behind bars.’
‘He is suspected of having committed acts of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment on various victims, including minors, and for having organised transport and accommodation for young girls and young women on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein,’ it said.
Brunel always denied wrongdoing.
French officials had begun investigating Brunel 16 months earlier. Thysia Huisman alleged that she was drugged and raped by him in 1991, when she was 18, and gave a statement to the Paris prosecutor.
Her lawyer, Anne-Claire Le Jeune, also represents three other women – two French and one Canadian – who say they were drugged and raped by Brunel when working as models in Paris.
Ms Le Jeune said they all described a similar experience. ‘With all of them, it was dinner, a drink, poisoned with I don’t know what drug,’ she said. ‘Then they wake up having been raped.’
