Indicted for rape, the model agent Jean-Luc Brunel counter-attack against his American accuser


He supports bitten never have had sex with her. And even less forced relationships. Six months after being indicted for “rape” and placed in pre-trial detention, the modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel launches a legal offensive against his main accuser. According to our information, he lodged a complaint in Paris on June 18 for “slanderous denunciation” against Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

Now 37 years old, this American is one of the first to denounce the sex trafficking network set up by the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in the 2000s. She claims in particular to have been retained as a “sex slave” for three years old and delivered to the billionaire’s friends. Including the French Jean-Luc Brunel therefore, whom she also accuses of having played the “touts” for Epstein, who committed suicide in his cell in August 2019 …

Virginia Roberts Giuffre holds a picture of herself at 16, when she met Jeffrey Epstein. – Miami Herald / TNS / Sipa USA / SIPA

Due to the coronavirus epidemic, it was by videoconference that she had confided for the first time, in 2020, to French investigators on this subject. By interposed screens, she then accused Jean-Luc Brunel of having raped her four times between February and August 2001. As she was a minor at that time, the facts denounced would not be prescribed, unlike the accusations of rape emanating from several ex-models dating back to the 1980s-1990s. It is essentially on the basis of the testimony of Virginia Roberts Giuffre that the French agent was arrested on December 19, 2020, indicted and imprisoned in the prison of Health (Paris) while he was preparing to take a flight to Dakar.

Naomi Campbell’s birthday party in question

But today, his testimony is partially questioned. At the request of Jean-Luc Brunel’s lawyers, the American, who now lives in Australia, was summoned to the Paris court on June 14 for a confrontation. Sign of the importance of this face-to-face, the American lawyer of Virginia Roberts Giuffre was present at his side, in addition to a French counsel. While she generally upheld her accusations, she admitted that her first testimony contained inconsistencies and even contradictions. His entourage emphasizes, however, that it is common for victims of sexual abuse to get the wrong dates, especially after more than twenty years.

The main point in dispute concerns Naomi Campbell’s birthday party, organized in Saint-Tropez (Var) on May 19, 2001. In its first version, Virginia Roberts Giuffre indicated having participated in the party of the top model – an element corroborated by photos in which she appears that evening with Jeffrey Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. It was at the end of this evening that she was raped by Jean-Luc Brunel, according to her story.

Except that on that date, he was in Australia, as his lawyers demonstrated by producing his passport at the time. Faced with this element, Virginia Roberts Giuffre admitted, during the confrontation, to have been wrong. And explained that she had in fact been raped by the boss of a major American hotel chain. An episode she had recounted in The Billionaire’s Playboy Club, a draft of her never-before-published memoir, which she attached to an American legal proceeding.

Epstein-Maxwell-Brunel Connection

For investigators, the challenge now is to determine when Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Jean-Luc Brunel could have found themselves in the same place and to what extent he could have abused her. Airport documents and photos prove that she was in France with Jeffrey Epstein, in March and May 2001. It remains to be seen whether Jean-Luc Brunel, a globetrotter listing nearly 500 cities visited around the world on his old Tripadvisor profile, was present in France.

In her manuscript, Virginia Roberts Giuffre assures in any case that Jean-Luc Brunel was present with Jeffrey Epstein on his island of Little Saint-James, in the Caribbean, for the birthday party of his 18 years, in August 2001. She writes to have been forced to participate in an orgy with other young girls who do not speak English, while Jean-Luc Brunel and Jeffrey Epstein “masturbated” while watching.

The flight log of Epstein’s private jet does not mention the presence of the French model agent on board the aircraft in the summer of 2001. But it is not excluded that he went to the island on its own or that the document is incomplete. Only his passport should allow investigators to decide. Jean-Luc Brunel appears well, on the other hand, on a flight with Virginia Roberts Giuffre between Florida and the Bahamas, on June 21, 2002.

Jeffrey Epstein's private jet flight manifesto.
Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet flight manifesto. – Manhattan Parquet

He then went on at least two occasions, in 2004, to Little Saint-James, where he was photographed, hilariously, alongside Ghislaine Maxwell. By this time, Virginia Roberts Giuffre had however managed to extricate herself from Epstein’s grip.

French agent Jean-Luc Brunel and Ghislaine Maxwell on Jeffrey Epstein's island in the mid-2000s.
French agent Jean-Luc Brunel and Ghislaine Maxwell on Jeffrey Epstein’s island in the mid-2000s. – Photos provided to “20 Minutes”

A new complainant has come forward

According to our information, the complainant would have been put in difficulty on a second element. It concerns the date of work carried out in the Parisian apartment of Jeffrey Epstein, avenue Foch, which he bought in 2001. Interviewed by 20 minutes in this regard, the lawyers of Jean-Luc Brunel therefore believe that all this discredits the substance of his accusations. “Virginia Roberts Giuffre recognizes today that she no longer has any certainty on the dates, places and people of which she claims to be a victim …”, thus indicate Marianne Abgrall and Mathias Chichportich.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre is not the only problem for Jean-Luc Brunel, however. Also according to our information, a new complainant recently came forward to the courts. And she also accuses the former model agent of rape. Now in her 40s and living abroad, this former model crossed the Atlantic to be questioned by the examining magistrate on June 21. The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, indicted for sex trafficking, which is to open in November in the United States, could also splash her old friend “Jean-Luc”.



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