Rape of Teen Model Rocks Fashion World
M I L A N, Italy, March 22, 2001 -- A legal drama unfolding in Italy, centered on the rape of a 15-year-old model, threatens to rock the world of high-fashion models.
Last fall the teenage model from Slovenia told authorities a shocking story of how she had been drugged and raped in a Milan nightclub bathroom. She said her efforts to scream for help could not be heard over the pounding dance music at the club.
"I kept asking him to stop, but the volume of the music was very high," the teen told police. "No one could hear me. It destroyed my optimism, everything looked black."
The rapist remains at large.
A Girl Abandoned?
The case has shaken the European fashion world because Italian authorities are holding the industry accountable for the crime.
In an unusual legal gambit, Milan prosecutor Marco Ghezzi has begun criminal proceedings against the girl's former modeling agency, Flash Model. Last month Ghezzi filed criminal charges against Alberto Reghini and his business partner, co-owners of the agency that had been representing 15-year-old girl.
Reghini says his agency did nothing wrong.
The prosecutor, however, says the girl's father left his daughter in their care and when they failed to keep her safe they committed the crime of "abandoning a minor."
"No, no, definitely no," says Reghini. "I think we did more than the best that we can do, because we are really 100 percent sure about that."
Some fashion-industry insiders argue that it is often the parents who throw their children into modelling, heedless of the dangers they may encounter.
Ghezzi says he hopes the case will be an eye-opener.
"I hope that I will make all the people in the fashion world understand, says Ghezzi, "that even though a model is a beautiful girl who looks older than her age, she can be a girl that is weak and fragile that needs to be defended."
Dreams, Drugs and 'Vultures'
Fashion-world insiders suggest that the young model's story is not unique.
Every October, during fashion week in Milan, some of the world's most beautiful teenage girls pour into the city — completely alone — in pursuit of their glamorous dreams.
When she arrived in Milan, the girl was given a cellular phone and an apartment to share with another model from California.
At that time, the teenager said, she was drug-free; but she soon began to party hard with an older crowd. Prosecutor Ghezzi says that the girl began using cocaine and crack.
"The reality is that these girls come in and there is nobody looking after them," says fashion journalist Sara Gay Forden. "This industry also attracts the vultures that feed on these girls — the playboys, the drivers, the people that circle around them."
Money and Youth
Modeling is a multi-billion dollar industry. And while the modeling agencies get richer each year, their models seem to get younger.
For many young hopefuls, Milan is their first big chance to break into modeling. Agencies find it much cheaper to introduce new talent here than the fashion centers of New York, London or Paris.
In Paris, models must be at least 16 to work the runways.
For this young model, the sometimes ugly business of beautiful girls has forced her to grow up fast. Her father says she has returned to Slovenia where she is at a rehabilitation center for drug abuse.