It’s been six years since the death of American financier and serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the extent of his crimes (and the complicity of a wide network of high-powered, well-connected individuals who helped enable Epstein’s abuse) is only just being fully understood thanks to the 2026 release of the Epstein files—and, of course, the efforts of his survivors. This week, many of those survivors joined the nonprofit advocacy group Model Alliance in calling for state and federal investigations into what role the modeling industry may have played in facilitating Epstein’s decades’ worth of predation.
Over 40 Epstein survivors and current and former models—including Model Alliance founder Sara Ziff, Beverly Johnson, Lisa Phillips, Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, Jasmine Lobe, and Teddy Quinlivan—have signed their names to letters to New York Attorney General Letitia James, California Rep. Ro Khanna, and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, urging them to go further in “investigat[ing] the systems that made Epstein’s operation possible.”
The Model Alliance’s letters outline the alleged roles of several modeling agency founders and other major industry figures (including MC2 founder Jean-Luc Brunel) in recruiting and helping to groom aspiring models for Epstein, tying the lack of protections for young and financially vulnerable women and girls within the modeling industry directly to Epstein’s ease of exploitation.
“Jeffrey Epstein was not a rogue outlier, but a beneficiary of–and a participant in–this system,” reads the letter, going on to state: “[The facts] raise serious questions about if and how the modeling industry functioned as a recruitment and referral pipeline–sending aspiring teenage models to Jeffrey Epstein and other men with power, wealth, and well-documented histories of abuse.”
“The Epstein files expose a darker truth about the modeling industry: What looks like glamour on the outside was, for many of us, a system that routinely put teenagers into dangerous and exploitative situations,” Ziff—a longtime advocate for victims of sexual abuse in the fashion industry—tells Vogue, adding: “While it is heartening to see so many people around the world demanding justice for survivors of Epstein, accountability must extend beyond individual perpetrators to the systems that enabled them. Only by confronting that system can we build a better, safer fashion industry—and protect the next generation.”
The list of prominent people who have resigned from their jobs or stepped back from public life following allegations of their ties to Epstein has expanded to include ex-prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, former Goldman Sachs chief legal officer Kathryn Ruemmler, and former Norwegian foreign minister Borge Brende, but it’s worth noting that former socialite and convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell is one of the only former Epstein associates currently serving prison time. Model Alliance hopes that these letters will lead to the convictions of others who enabled Epstein’s crimes.
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