In November 2001, the Dutch supermodel Karen Mulder sat down for an interview on French TV. Blonde, poised and striking, Mulder, who graced the cover of Vogue nine times over the course of her career, had been nicknamed the “real-life Barbie” for her doll-like beauty. Her chat with presenter Thierry Ardisson, host of the show Tout le monde en parle, should have been a frothy, fun discussion of her latest venture, swapping fashion for the music industry. But what followed took a much darker turn.
Speaking in front of a live studio audience, Mulder made a string of harrowing accusations, claiming that she had been raped by figures in the modelling industry, European royalty, politicians and police officers. The model, then in her early thirties, was soon cut off by Ardisson. “Her claims were regarded as so devastating, and so potentially libellous, that the interview was cut from the show,” a report from The Independent put it at the time. It’s thought that the tapes were destroyed afterwards.
Mulder was painted as hysterical and unstable. This was, after all, more than 15 years before the #MeToo movement; women who levelled accusations of abuse at powerful men were at best ignored, at worst stigmatised and ridiculed. According to reports, the host called her outburst “a paranoid delirium” and said she was in “an extremely disturbed psychological state”. Her family would publicly blame her issues with drugs; other, more euphemistic news stories would allude to a “nervous...
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