Model Victim-Shamed After Dark Web Kidnapping

It is not exactly hard to pinpoint why it is so difficult to believe Chloe Ayling, a 20-year-old British glamor model who claims she was kidnapped last August by a crazed Polish man who, she says, drugged her, stuffed her into a roller suitcase and kept her captive near the French-Italian border for a week. It is just hard to say why she is not believable out loud.

کد خبر: ۷۷۶۹۱۵

تاریخ: ۰۵ اسفند ۱۳۹۶ - ۰۸:۵۶

Her alleged kidnapper, Lukasz Herba, was arrested in August after dropping the young model off at the British Consulate in Milan. He is now standing trial for the kidnapping, and his brother, Michal Konrad Herba, whom police say worked with him to lay the trap that caught the model, is in jail in the United Kingdom, fighting extradition to Italy.

But despite the facts of the case being presented at the trial, many people view the story with a raised eyebrow. Even with corroborated testimony about the presence of Ketalar, a powerful anesthetic drug often used to sedate horses, which was found in Ayling’s system, the case is still viewed with skepticism.

It is likely that her Kardashian-style online scrapbook, which contained a healthy dose of slicked-up skin before she took it down, sewed bias about her believability. It was used as a picture gallery across the mainstream and tabloid press when the story broke last August, including on this website.

But that was before the #MeToo movement, which broke two months later and which has since spread across multiple sectors and platforms and served as a wake-up call to the media about its collective and often not-so-subtle bias and innuendo when it comes to shaming victims through selective imagery.

Before the #MeToo movement, a picture was worth a thousand words and alleged victims like Ayling were doubted at first sight. Now, those who write about court cases outside the tabloid orbit are struggling through the minefield of trying to figure out how to talk about the model’s social media presence while avoiding the tropes of what she was wearing, and whether she was “too sexy” or “asking for it.”

That change in social consciousness is a very good thing, making easy victim-blaming much more difficult.