Swimsuits and lingerie

Some of Lex Wexner’s Victoria Secret glamorous catwalk models can be viewed at http://www.vogue.co.uk/gallery/victorias-secret-show-archive-past-catwalks.

The New York Times reported in July that two senior L Brands executives learned in the mid-1990s that Mr. Epstein was trying to pitch himself as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret models and that Mr. Wexner was alerted to the inappropriate behavior. Around the same time, a model said, Mr. Epstein lured her to his hotel room under the pretense of being a Victoria’s Secret talent scout and then attacked her.

The executives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing nondisclosure agreements, said they had not been contacted as part of the investigation, which is being conducted by Davis Polk & Wardwell, a prominent law firm with deep connections to L Brands. Mr. Wexner’s wife, Abigail, once worked there as an associate, and his financial adviser is a former partner.

Mr. Wexner bought Victoria’s Secret for $1 million in 1982. He transformed it into a global powerhouse that defined many Americans’ perceptions of female sexiness.

For years, Victoria’s Secret and its catalogs sought to convey a high-minded British sensibility. The “English heritage of the brand” was “totally made-up but effective,” said Ms. Fedus-Fields, who oversaw the growth of the direct business to almost $1 billion in annual revenue.

The brand’s guiding light in those days was a fictional woman named Victoria who had been raised in England by a successful London businessman and a French mother. She was well educated and married to a barrister. Company decisions were often made by asking, “Would Victoria do this?” By the time Ms. Fedus-Fields left in 2000, she said, the English aesthetic was fading and the brand was becoming “much more blatantly sexy.”

The Victoria’s Secret catalog in 1991 and 1992.Credit…Victoria’s Secret

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/business/l-brands-victorias-secret-les-wexner-epstein.html

Young girls fantasised about becoming models like these, just as starlets flocked to Hollywood dreaming of becoming a famed beauty on the screen.

Victoria’s Secret Fashion show in New York in 2005. Picture: Victorias Secret.

But the lure was like a moth trap, the innocent fluttered their wings and were caught by predators who eagerly welcomed them in. And they were destroyed.

First Epstein, Now This: Widespread Sexual Harassment of Victoria’s Secret Models Alleged in Exposé

Feb 1st, 2020

For decades, top executives at Victoria’s Secret engendered and participated in creating a culture of rampant misogyny, bullying, sexual harassment, and retaliation, according to a Saturday New York Times exposé.

In 1997, Alicia Arden, an actress and model in California, alleged that she was manhandled and assaulted by Epstein after he identified himself as a talent scout for Victoria’s Secret. Another alleged victim, Maria Farmer, claimed she was sexually assaulted by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in Wexner’s mansion in 1996. She said she tried to call the police but was held by Wexner’s security staff for 12 hours.

As previously reported by Law&Crime, Epstein, who was charged with sex-trafficking last year before officially dying by suicide, mysteriously maintained sweeping control over Wexner’s fortune for decades before the two cut business ties approximately 12 years ago.

Razek, who resigned in August as the brand struggled to reinvent itself, was perceived within the company as “Wexner’s proxy,” which reportedly allowed him to operate with impunity despite myriad complaints regarding inappropriate behavior that included: groping models, trying to kiss them, asking them to sit on his lap, and grabbing one’s crotch without consent prior to the brand’s televised 2018 fashion show. Several witnesses also alleged instances in which Razek publicly demeaned and shamed women, and retaliated professionally against those who dared file complaints about his conduct with human resources.

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/first-epstein-now-this-widespread-sexual-harassment-of-victorias-secret-models-alleged-in-expose/

Harvey Weinstein was another predator on the innocent:

Before their comeuppances, the mention of Weinstein conjured images of respected films and actors, while Epstein — albeit less in the public eye — had ties to rich and powerful figures like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and Prince Andrew, as well as institutions like Harvard University (via The Washington Post). The pair amassed wealth and connections as they committed disturbing acts of sexual assault behind the facade that they worked years to create. They were also friends who appeared to use their connections and status to help each other commit their crimes — at least, for a time.

….bid for New York Magazine

As reported by New York Magazine, both Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein were part of a group of investors that was looking to purchase the outlet in 2003. Among the other people in the group were billionaire Nelson Peltz, businessman Donny Deutsch, and U.S. News & World Report owner Mortimer Zuckerman (via The New York Times). Ultimately, the group bid $44 million for the publication to Primedia Inc. but was outbid by investment banker Bruce Wasserstein.

Why get into media? According to The New York Times, the group was motivated by “ego, power, and cachet.” While Weinstein had enough Hollywood influence at the time, Business Insider said Epstein “tried to establish himself as a media mogul.” The outlet noted that after the failed New York Magazine bid, he and Zuckerman invested $25 million into Radar Magazine. The outlet was ultimately sold to American Media Inc. in 2008 when it stopped publishing in print amid struggles to stay afloat.

Their exact motivations are unclear. Nevertheless, the media disintegration of figures like Prince Andrew — who settled a sexual abuse lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims who Andrew was accused of raping — shows what such charges can do to the carefully crafted public images of influential people.

Investigative journalism has created an online trail for anyone to follow:

In his book “Relentless Pursuit,” Bradley Edwards, one of the lawyers who helped put Jeffrey Epstein behind bars, described a disturbing story about Weinstein and Epstein’s reported sexual abuse (via The Sun). Edwards pointed to a conversation with Jean-Luc Brunel, an Epstein associate accused of helping him run an underage sex trafficking ring (per the Daily Beast). Brunel reportedly described a scene where Weinstein was receiving a massage from one of Epstein’s “girls.”

“He attempted to aggressively convert the massage into something sexual,” Edwards said. “The girl rejected his advances. As the story goes, Harvey then verbally abused her for rejecting him. Little did Harvey know, this was one of Epstein’s favorite girls at the time and Jeffrey viewed the aggressive mistreatment as disrespectful to him.”

 Epstein allegedly kicked Weinstein out of the house, “delivering the message that he was never to come back.” That was apparently the end of their relationship.

https://www.grunge.com/1159215/disturbing-details-about-harvey-weinstein-and-jeffrey-epsteins-relationship/

Donald Trump was forced to sell the Miss Universe Organization – which also includes sister scholarship programs Miss USA and Miss Teen USA – in 2015 after his incendiary comments about Mexicans drove away broadcasters NBC and Univision. But Trump owned the pageant for nearly two decades, during which time he would have had the opportunity to come into contact with nearly 4,000 beauty queens.

From walking into a teen dressing room to joking about his obligation to sleep with contestants, Trump’s a storied pageant creep

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/a-timeline-of-donald-trumps-creepiness-while-he-owned-miss-universe-191860/

In a Guardian piece:

Brown did not heed his warning. She flung herself at the investigation and eventually persuaded Reiter to go on record. Her resulting, award-winning three-part series last November exposed a vast operation in which 80 potential victims were identified, some as young as 13 and 14 at the time of the alleged abuse. She persuaded eight to tell their stories.

Brown also exposed a government cover-up in which Epstein got away with an exceptionally light sentence that saw him serve only 13 months in jail. She discovered that a “non-prosecution agreement” had been negotiated secretly in 2008 by the then top federal prosecutor in Miami, Alexander Acosta, that gave Epstein and his co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution.

In 2017, Acosta was appointed by Donald Trump as labor secretary, a post that ironically is responsible for combating sex trafficking.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/13/jeffrey-epstein-alex-acosta-miami-herald-media

2025:

The FBI revealed in an unsigned memo released last week that Federal investigators have confirmed that “Epstein harmed over 1,000 victims,” each one suffering “unique trauma.”

There is so much evidence, such as that in Craig Ungar’s book, American Kompramat, which contradicts Trump’s denial of his involvement with women procured by Jeffrey Epstein:

Anna Malova wasn’t the only woman who spent time with both Trump and Epstein. In 1997, Trump, who had just separated from Marla Maples, was photographed with Ghislaine at Ford Models’ fiftieth-anniversary party, where he ogled models throughout the evening.25 At another event that year, according to the New Yorker, Trump, then fifty, seemed to fall for a friend of Ghislaine’s, twenty-year-old London model Anouska De Georgiou, and flew her and Ghislaine to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend, after which he installed Anouska in an apartment in Trump Tower.26

July 15, 2025

Terry Moran, on Substack

But the scandal of Epstein’s crimes was never about politics. It was about class. Rich men got away with it. There are princes and presidents, corporate chieftains and celebrity lawyers, oil sheikhs and Hollywood icons and scions of famous families—so many rich men flying on the devil’s jet, dining with him, partying with him, visiting his island of terror for so many girls and women. These men, they are so familiar to us in so many areas of our politics, our economy, and our culture: the rich men who seem to glide through life beyond and above our systems of accountability.

Trump denied he was ever on Epstein’s plane:

the flight logs indicated he flew on Epstein’s plane at least seven times. There is no suggestion that Mr Trump was flown to the island.

The logs indicate that on one of the trips between New York and Florida he was accompanied by his then-wife Marla Maples and their daughter, Tiffany, and another listed his son Eric as a passenger.

In 2015, author and journalist, Nick Bryant found publisher Gawker to put ‘the little black book’ in print, which created a major stir.

In 2015, finally, Gawker published the Little Black Book and accompanying articles. I found it ironic that Gawker, considered to be the mean kids in the media, had the fortitude to publish a story about children whose lives have been disfigured with impunity, whereas media outlets ostensibly immersed in integrity had rejected the story.   

See

https://nickbryantnyc.com/

So much garbage surfacing, but it has to be corrected:

Bill O’Reilly reluctantly had to admit Monday night that his outlandish claims about the Biden administration and former Attorney General Merrick Garland “convicting” Jeffrey Epstein were false, muttering a truculent “yeah, so” when NewsNation anchor Leland Vittert corrected him.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/bill-oreilly-trump-epstein-biden-b2789412.html

The Mint Press published an article in 2019 about Lex Wexner. Epstein and the MEGA (not MAGA) group, here is an extract:

The Mega Group’s role in the Epstein case has garnered some attention, as Epstein’s main financial patron for decades, billionaire Leslie Wexner, was a co-founder of the group that unites several well-known businessmen with a penchant for pro-Israel and ethno-philanthropy (i.e., philanthropy benefiting a single ethnic or ethno-religious group). However, as this report will show, another uniting factor among Mega Group members is deep ties to organized crime, specifically the organized crime network discussed in Part I of this series, which was largely led by notorious American mobster Meyer Lansky.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/mega-group-maxwells-mossad-spy-story-jeffrey-epstein-scandal/261172/

For more on Jewish mob member, Meyer Lansky, see:

https://www.biography.com/crime/meyer-lansky

Back in the 1930s, a Canadian named Samuel Bronfman, exploited legal loopholes to sell liquor during the Canadian, then the American Prohibition Era:

Most of Bronfman’s mob associates during Prohibition were members of what became known as the National Crime Syndicate, which a 1950s Senate investigative body known as the Kefauver Committee described as a confederation dominated by Italian-American and Jewish-American mobs. During that investigation, some of the biggest names in the American Mafia named Bronfman as a central figure in their bootlegging operations. The widow of notorious American mob boss Meyer Lansky even recounted how Bronfman had thrown lavish dinner parties for her husband. 

Years later, Samuel Bronfman’s children and grandchildren, their family’s ties to the criminal underworld intact, would go on to associate closely with Leslie Wexner, allegedly the source of much of Epstein’s mysterious wealth, and other mob-linked “philanthropists,” and some would even manage their own sexual blackmail operations, including the recently busted blackmail-based “sex cult” NXIVM. The later generations of the Bronfman family, particularly Samuel Bronfman’s sons Edgar and Charles, will be discussed in greater detail in Part II of this report.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/shocking-origins-jeffrey-epstein-blackmail-roy-cohn/260621/

2025 from auto-generated internet search:

Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, was fired recently. She was known for her work on high-profile cases, including those involving Jeffrey Epstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs. Political Wire Axios

Unknown's avatar

About borderslynn

Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers. In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
This entry was posted in anthropocene and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to Swimsuits and lingerie

  1. Pingback: Strong ties | borderslynn

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.