## JAMES PATTERSON

## Jean-Luc Brunel: 2005

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_009275

Tor Jeffrey Epstein, Leslie Wexner is more than a mentor. F More than the last in a line of older men- -father figures- whom Epstein cultivated while making his way in the world.

Wexner is also a steady, if indirect, source of beautiful women.

After all, Wexner is the man in charge of Victoria's Secret, part of the Limited family of companies and-better yet-in charge of the Victoria's Secret catalog. What this means for Epstein is models galore. In fact, like a fox that's gotten hold of the lease to a henhouse, Epstein, according to evidence collected in a later lawsuit brought by Epstein victims, eventually pro- vided financial support for a modeling agency, and provided support for models employed by that agency, in New York City.

This story begins with a Frenchman-a playboy modeling agent named Jean-Luc Brunel who was an owner of the Karin modeling agency.

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getting involved in his
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its name, in 2005, from

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the information he ha
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Brunel had been working as a modeling agent since the sev- enties. He claimed to have launched the careers of Monica Bel- lucci, Estelle, Jerry Hall, Rachel Hunter, Milla Jovovich, Rebecca Romijn, Kristina Semenovskaya, Sharon Stone, and Estella War- ren, as well as Christy Turlington and other well-known cover girls. Brunel had also been a subject of a 60 Minutes investiga- tion, broadcast in 1988, into sexual exploitation in the modeling industry. That exposé had caused Eileen Ford of the elite Ford modeling agency to sever her ties with the playboy. (Brunel's activities were also chronicled in a 1995 book about the fashion

"I strongly deny t
indirectly, in the actior
Brunel would say. "I st
act or any wrongdoing
model agencies manag
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According to Bru

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