If you say something I kill you

When he left the room he said ”If you say something I will kill you”. 

I was sixteen, had recently arrived in France and worked as a model at Paris’ largest agency, Paris Planning.

I was staying in a small hotel close to Place de la Madeleine, not far from the agency, and had just returned from a café on the Champs Elysées when the doorbell rang. I asked who it was and got the answer that the reception had a message for me.

When I opened it, a man was standing there. I recognized him from the cafe and I assumed he had followed me, managed to get into the hotel and seen my room number. I tried to close the door, but he blocked it with his foot. The pictures tell the rest.

I think it was in 2006 that I found out that the man, who used to call himself Avedon, had died (not the real photographer Avedon). The last person he was with was Uma Thurman. How could she be with him? He had been with models as well. A few weeks after he raped me, I met him with a Danish model who I often worked with.

I was terrified…  I did not dare return to the hotel until 2007. My whole body shook because nothing had changed. It looked exactly the same. The following year I went to Paris with a friend. We entered the hotel, in the same room as it happened, and she got to act like me. Had she not been there, I would never have dared. Only when I took out the camera and recreated what was happening in the small worn hotel room, did I realize that I have been scared ever since and that much of what I have done has been marked by this event.