Elite
Fashion
Inc
[2009] Modeling And The
Tragedy Of Karen Mulder It came after
she laid a formal rape complaint in France against Prince Albert. It came after
she said, "My job distracted me from my worries. It enabled me not to be myself,
to pretend I was someone else." It came after a notorious appearance on French
television where her various claims — that men at Elite had raped her, that she
had been coerced into having sex to garner better contracts, that Elite had used
her and other models as sex slaves in a ring that extended through the top
echelons of French society, implicating politicians, members of the police, and
other top officials, that her own father had raped her, that she had been
sexually abused by a family friend from the age of 2, that she had been
hypnotized and raped, kidnapped and raped, and raped some more — were regarded
as so potentially libelous that France 2 not only never aired the segment, but
destroyed the master tape. No matter: In a series of more-or-less coherent
magazine interviews, Mulder repeated most of her accusations, and added that her
agency had encouraged her to use cocaine and heroin. She told the Daily Mail,
"They tried to turn me into a prostitute because they thought it would be so
easy. I was raped by two bookers. I reported them and they were fired. Another
time I was shut in the office of [a high-profile man from the modeling world]
for a whole day. All these people who betrayed me I used to love very much. Then
I realized how big the conspiracy was. It brought in the government and police,
who both used Elite girls. People have tried to kidnap and poison me."
Her suicide attempt came after she
was packed off to Montsouris hospital and heavily sedated for five months of
treatment for depression and anxiety. (Gerald Marie, the head of Elite Paris and
one of the men Mulder had accused of raping her, paid.) It came after Marie was
filmed on hidden camera by the BBC trying to give a 15-year-old model £300 for
sex, and bragging of how many entrants to the Elite Model Look competition —
average age 15 — he was going to sleep with that year.