Toulouse: a photographer indicted for rape after several complaints from models
On January 12, 2022, Fabrice M, photographer based in Toulouse, was charged with rape and sexual assaultreport The Dispatch. The man is placed under judicial supervision. He is suspected of having raped three young women including a minor over 15 years old, and to have sexually assaulted two others, between 2013 and 2020.
Five Complaints mannequins have been filed against him. Three of them decided to testify to the Parisian. This is Vanessa (names have been changed in the original article) who is the first to denounce the photographer, almost 7 years after his assault. Encouraging other young female victims to speak out.
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From trust to penetration
Vanessa tells our colleagues that she met Fabrice M in 2013. A first successful collaboration at the end of which the photographer takes his coordinates for future shootings. A year later, he contacts her again because he urgently needs a model.
In its plain, filed in August 2020the young woman explains: “he wanted to do some tests for a clothing brand. In exchange he offered me a shoot of my choice“.
Vanessa asks to do a nude shoot because “in my eyes, it is a reference in this field.” Photos that she would need in her career and that she didn’t want to do with anyone. “If there was anyone I could do that with, it was him. I was a little uncomfortable with some remarksbut there was no sexual allusion, no touching. It gave me confidence…”, confides the young woman.
He came to the side, between my legs, by surprise. He penetrated me with a finger.
Fabrice M contacted her again in autumn 2014, this time for a night shoot “in lingerie”, says Vanessa. “I go there without worry because it went well last time.”
But the atmosphere becomes strange. The photographer shows him a photo of a woman in full orgasm and asks him to reproduce the poses. She refuses and only accepts to pose “in a bra and boxers. He was on a stepladder, he was above me.”
It is in her complaint that the young model details the attack which follows: “we were on a series where I had to keep my eyes closed continuouslyt. At one point, I felt his hand pass right next to my boxers. It came to the side, between my legs, by surpriseI didn’t feel it right away. He penetrated me with a finger, direct. As soon as he entered me, I opened my eyes and said, ‘I think that’on a reached my limits the'”.
From guilt to filing a complaint
She immediately leaves the premises and blame. “I did a big denial of what had happened, but it haunted me for years. It took me a while to realize that it was good a rape that I had lived“, says Vanessa.
It was in the summer of 2020, in the middle of the night, when she had insomnia, that the top model a click. Reading the Google reviews on Fabrice M, she came across a message from a user calling the photographer “junk” who allegedly harassed several young girls. Settled in Canada, she returned to France a few days later and file a complaint.
She also shares his aggression on social networks. But anonymously without putting the name of the photographer. Fabrice M reads this testimony and seems to recognize since he will deposit complaint for defamation.
An investigation and other victims
After Vanessa’s complaint, the gendarmes wonder on possible other victims. They begin to look on the side of others models who have already worked with Fabrice M. They go back to Céleste and Laura (their first names have been changed), friends since filming with Fabrice M. They are auditioned.
When I learned that there were many other testimonies, I thought it was important to speak.
Celeste recounts a photo shoot in Biarritz in 2019. She would have woken up “with Fabrice glued to [elle], erect penis and hand on [s]on breast.”
“At the time, I had no unaware that it was a sexual assault… But when I heard that there were many other testimonials, I thought that it was important to talk“, she declares.
Céleste also describes a weekend organized in Toulouse by Fabrice M. She and her friend Laura are invited. The photographer would have massaged the legs “before going back up to [son] sexual”.
Laura, meanwhile, must have posed in lingerie for Fabrice M that same weekend. “At one point, he used the pretext of putting my panties back on me for the photo to penetrates me digitally. I screamed and pushed him.” Laura and Celeste leave the scene but do not file a complaint.
It is a year later that Laura realizes the seriousness of the facts. “I was far from this story, I had moved on. But when I found out about his defamation case a year later and learned that other women denounced his behaviorincluding a minor, I decided to open it and tell everything,” she says.
Manipulation and breach of trust
This freedom of speech allowed five women to file a complaint against the photographer. The three women who testified in the press denounce having been manipulated by Fabrice M.
Some predators take advantage of this trust to better betray and sexually abuse unarmed victims.
“My three clients have trust this photographerwhich is essential in their profession”, explains Me Pierre Debuisson. “It is unbearable to see that certain predators take over this confidence to better betray her and sexually abuse her unarmed victims,” he says.
According to comments made by our colleagues from The Dispatch, some young women do not want to file a complaint but want to speak out to protect other potential victims. “I am not filing a complaint because my family is not informed. Simply, I wish to warn the girls “, recognizes one of them.
Fabrice M disputes the facts.“At no time did he make inappropriate gestures towards these women. The rest of the procedure will succeed in suppressing the truth”, declared his lawyer Me Atiyeh Zarrin Bakhsh.
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