“If I had disobeyed my mother and gone to New York, what might have happened to me?”
Gláucia Fekete was 16 years old in 2004, living in rural Brazil and just beginning to dream of a modeling career. Then a Frenchman named Jean-Luc Brunel showed up at her family home, trying to convince her mother to let her travel to a modeling contest in Ecuador.
She had no idea who Brunel really was. Neither did her mother. They only knew he came recommended by a famous Brazilian scout.
Today, they know the truth. Brunel was a predator who killed himself in prison while awaiting trial for rape and sexual assault — and who, according to a BBC News Brasil investigation, used his modeling agencies to recruit young women and girls from South America for Jeffrey Epstein.
Brunel’s network helped arrange US visas for Brazilian women to travel to Epstein. At least one of them says she never did any modeling work — the visa was solely so she could visit the financier.
“My mother saved me,” Gláucia says now.
The Contest
Gláucia’s mother, Barbara, was suspicious of Brunel from the start. But he was “very charming,” and eventually she relented — allowing her daughter to travel to Guayaquil, Ecuador, for the Models New Generation competition, without her.
Local newspapers at the time reported that participants were between 15 and 19 years old.
The competition itself passed without major incident, though Gláucia grew uneasy when she wasn’t allowed to contact her family. Another contestant, a 16-year-old from Western Europe identified only as Laura, remembers finding Brunel’s behavior odd.
“It was weird how he behaved and was always hanging out with the young Brazilian girls,” Laura says. “He was behaving like a clown and only hanging out with quite young girls.”
Laura believes the competition was legitimate, but that Brunel “knew exactly which girls were vulnerable.” His targets, she says, were primarily girls from Brazil and Eastern Europe. “He seemed to control their finances.”
Toward the end of the trip, Brunel offered to fly Gláucia to New York for shows — all expenses paid. He needed her mother’s permission.
Barbara’s response was immediate and absolute: “No. Not a chance.”
“They were only looking for children, minors,” Barbara says now. “Unfortunately they found my daughter.”
She cut all ties with Brunel’s network and forbade Gláucia from any further modeling.
“It really was a narrow escape,” Gláucia says.
Epstein in Ecuador
Documents released by the US government show Epstein was in Guayaquil on August 24-25, 2004 — the same weekend as the modeling competition’s final. Records indicate that at least one model under 16 who attended the event flew on Epstein’s plane at least twice that same year.
Gláucia looks back now with chilling clarity: “Without knowing it, I was in the middle of that storm.”
“My mother saved me.”
‘He Chose Me’
Another Brazilian woman, identified as Ana to protect her identity, describes how Brunel’s modeling business facilitated her relationship with Epstein.
In the early 2000s, a woman in São Paulo recruited Ana with promises of modeling work. Instead, Ana says, the woman took her documents, told her she owed money for travel and photos, and began trafficking her.
“She was a madam. Before I knew it, she was pimping me out.”
One client was Epstein. Ana was just past her 18th birthday when the madam took her to a prominent businessman’s home in São Paulo. There, she heard him describe Epstein as “the king of the world” and say: “He likes younger girls.”
Days later, she and two other women were sent to a luxury hotel where Epstein would choose one of them.
“He chose me,” Ana says.
In the hotel room, Epstein asked her to remove her clothes. “His thing was watching me while he touched himself. It was disgusting, but of all evils, the lesser one.”
US Department of Justice files, including emails and flight records, place Epstein in Brazil at that time.
The Visa
At a party in São Paulo days later, Ana met Brunel for the first time. Soon, he was instrumental in arranging a US visa for her.
Epstein told her he was going to Paris the next day and had already arranged for her to join him. She describes the trip: “He would give me $300. I would go out for a walk and give him the change, but he would tell me to keep the money. He would test me and leave money in my room, and then I would give it back to him, and he would say I could keep it.”
Then came New York. Epstein told Ana he had arranged for Brunel to hire her at his modeling agency — and that the madam had handed over her documents.
Ana showed the BBC her passport, containing a US business visa with an annotation naming Karin Models of America — an agency Brunel set up in the US.
Ana says she never worked for the agency. The visa was solely to visit Epstein.
Court records and DOJ files confirm Brunel used his agencies — first Karin Models of America, later MC2 in America — to attract girls from several countries, including minors. Former MC2 employees testified that Epstein paid for visas arranged through Brunel’s agencies. Epstein had financially backed Brunel when he set up MC2 in the US.
Brunel denied any wrongdoing before his death. His lawyers said he was “crushed” by the allegations and blamed a “media-judicial system.”
‘Like a Wolf Looking at a Lamb’
Over about four months, Ana traveled to the US and France with Epstein, who was “affectionate” toward her, paid for English lessons, and once told her he refused Brunel’s request to sleep with her: “I didn’t let him because you’re mine.”
Ana didn’t know whether to feel “grateful or more terrified.” After that, she felt Brunel was “like a wolf looking at a lamb, always with devouring eyes, both for other girls and me.”
She visited Epstein at least six times before US authorities cancelled her visa in Miami, questioning who was paying for her work and whether she was receiving money in the US.
She went to his private island in the US Virgin Islands. She thought he considered her his girlfriend — until she found him in bed with someone else.
“Until then, it hadn’t sunk in that he did this with many girls,” she says.
For the first hotel meeting and Paris trip, Ana says the Brazilian madam was to receive $10,000 in cash from Epstein. He paid only part, and she overheard phone calls pressuring him for the remainder — a detail consistent with 2010 testimony from a former MC2 accountant cited in the Epstein files.
After her visa was cancelled, Epstein offered Ana a green card. She declined, wanting to stay close to her family in Brazil.
The Investigation Continues
Brazil’s Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation in February into whether a recruitment network linked to Epstein operated in the country.
Federal prosecutor Cinthia Gabriela Borges, from the national anti-trafficking unit, told the BBC she wants to speak with women who had contact with Epstein to understand how the system operated. The women themselves are not targets of the inquiry.
Labor inspector and researcher Maurício Krepsky says what happened to Ana and others could constitute human trafficking for sexual exploitation — a crime that may carry no statute of limitations, meaning Brazilians involved could still face accountability.
Survival
Gláucia is grateful for a mother who said no. Ana, after years of trying to make sense of what happened, feels fortunate to have escaped Epstein’s circle and rebuilt her life.
“I think I was lucky, but I feel for the other women,” Ana says.
In the files released by the US government, in the testimony of former employees, in the memories of women who were girls when they crossed paths with Epstein and Brunel, a pattern emerges — a network that reached across continents, targeting the vulnerable, enabled by those who should have protected them.
For every woman who escaped, others did not. The investigation continues. The questions remain. And for women like Gláucia, the what-ifs will never fully fade.
