Sometime in 1995 when Ivanka Trump is 14 years old, her father signs her up with a modeling gig at his friend John Casablanca’s agency, Elite. The president of the company, Monical Pillard, first set his sights on signing Ivanka when she was 11 or 12.
At least two Elite executives and two Elite modeling agents knew that John Casablancas and his partner Gerald Marie were sleeping with underage talent, long before Casablancas started a public affair with a 16-year-old.
Anderson Boyd told HuffPost in 2018 that models regularly told her about sexual misconduct within the business.
She also recounted witnessing two female executives at the company implore Casablancas and another executive, Gerald Marie, to stop sleeping with underage girls.
Anderson Boyd told New York Magazine in 2000 that Marie simply responded, “We are men. We have our needs.”
Another modeling agent with Elite, Carolyn Kramer, said, “There was a below-the-radar understanding that the [executives] of Elite [Casablancas and Marie] were sleeping with young women.”
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Elite was known for offering its models, most between ages 14 and 18, something most agencies didn’t: drugs and alcohol.
In a 2018 interview with HuffPost, Carolyn Kramer said “The models were basically prostitutes. [The owner] would have parties I would be at with licentious business men who were only there to fuck the models.”
Trump became friends with Casablancas sometime in the 1970s after being introduced by Roy Cohn. The New York Times reported in 1997 that Elite was known to host events at Trump Tower.
At least two of Casablancas’ models turned up dead in mysterious accidents within a year of the company opening in 1972. In both cases, the victims alleged that they were raped or molested shortly before they died.
Casablancas personally managed Ivanka’s modeling career. Most reports of Ivanka’s modeling career say she started at age 15, but a December 18, 1995 article in New York Magazine reads:
Fourteen year old Ivanka, the suddenly ravishing mini-babe who seems like one of those kids from soap operas-4 years old one day, 19 the next-is starting to model
Other celebrities working for Elite at the time include Jenny McCarthy, Drew Barrymore, and Ashley Judd.
Photograph: GEOFF WILKINSON/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Sources
https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/trump-is-unusually-friendly-with-men-accused-of-crimes-against-women-children–Rvgcm5dUEqr-aBDArOMYA
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/17/style/her-cheekbones-high-or-her-name-trump.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/modeling-agencies-sexual-predators_n_5a395d1ce4b0c65287acc57b
