“I had no idea what I had been a part of.” It emerged that the pair had been close associates, and that Brunel was accused of supplying more than 1,000 girls and young women for Epstein to have sex with.
The investigation was being led by police investigating the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Two months later, Brunel was arrested on suspicion of trafficking and raping underage girls. “I thought: how many other women out there, like me, had buried it?” In October 2020, though, she read the Guardian’s investigations into abuse in the fashion industry, drawing on accounts from former models who had had similar experiences in Paris in the 80s and 90s, including some with allegations against her alleged rapist, Brunel. Three decades later, as #MeToo reverberated around the world, Shine opened up to close friends and relatives, but rarely went into details. “I felt like this dirty, vile, horrible thing.” She didn’t tell anyone, not even the therapist her mother arranged for her to see. “I didn’t understand how deeply it affected me and I blamed myself,” says Shine, now 58, from her home in Mill Valley, California.
Marianne Shine in 1985: ‘Before Paris I was this playful, creative girl, but that part of me vanished.’ Photograph: Frank Maresca/courtesy of Marianne Shine
