Model's lawyer bashes claims that kidnapping was a hoax - New York Post

The lawyer for a British model who claims she was abducted by a sex-slave ring has rejected suggestions that it was a tall tale – while a close pal said Tuesday she’s already preparing for a new photoshoot, according to reports.

Chloe Ayling, 20, told authorities that two men attacked her during a phony photo shoot in Milan, where they drugged her, stuffed her in a bag and dragged her off to a remote village near Turin.

Police said a group calling itself “Black Death,” which sought to auction her online, held her for six days before she was released at the British consulate in Milan.

But doubts were cast about Ayling’s account when it emerged that she went on a shoe-shopping spree during her alleged captivity.

But her lawyer, Francesco Pesce, said she was too frightened to offer any resistance to her captors and believed she would be harmed if she tried to escape, The Guardian reported.

“She was told that people were there watching her and ready to kill her if she tried anything,” he told BBC Radio, according to the Telegraph.

“So she thought that the best idea was to go along with it and to be nice in a way to her captor because he told her that he wanted to release her somehow and sometime and she thought that the best thing to do was not to go in conflict with him,” he said.

“So she abided to his request, ‘Let’s go and buy groceries’ and ‘You need shoes, let’s go buy shoes’ and she didn’t try to flee,” he said. “But I believe she was terrified at the moment and even if she could’ve asked for help she didn’t because she was subjugated to this person, or people as she was given to understand.”

Ayling has told police she had developed trust with a captor – who gave her chocolate and underwear – but insisted he had not sexually assaulted her.

Pesce said the “legitimate doubts” about her account have all been erased.

“What Chloe told police during 10 hours, it wasn’t easy on her,” he told The Guardian.

“If the police were convinced [of the story] after that, then I am convinced. What also would be his [the abductor’s] motive [to collaborate]? Twenty years in jail?” he said.

Pesce said his client, a mother of an infant son, had been told she would be sold to someone in the Middle East for sex.

“I heard people doubting her and implying that she was somehow involved in this case, that she was somehow involved in this because it was too easy an escape and that I really can’t believe, that people think that about Chole Ayling,” he told BBC Radio.

“She was subjected to a tremendous ordeal and she suffered so much,” said Pesce, who called suggestions of her deception as “evil.”

Lukasz Pawel Herba, 30, a Polish national living in the UK, was accused of planning to sell the woman for almost $300,000. He was collared after he took Ayling to the British consulate.

A police spokesman refused to say whether they are investigating a possible collusion between the pair.

“It’s a very delicate investigation and we can’t say anything. We are investigating a crime,” he told The Guardian. “Everything will be communicated in an official way.”

Police say they are looking for at least one accomplice, believed to be Herba’s brother Mikail, but they have refused to confirm the person’s identity.

Meanwhile, a close friend said Ayling is getting ready to jump back into modeling.

Carla Belluci, a model and agent, told the BBC that a photo shoot might be Ayling’s “way of coping” with her trauma, Britain’s Independent newspaper reported.

“For me, I wouldn’t – I think that would be the last thing on my mind. She has her reasons, and maybe it’s her way for dealing with what’s happened to her – to get back out there,” Belluci said.

Asked about suggestions that “something about the story doesn’t add up,” Belluci said: “That’s such a hard one, Chloe being a friend of mine.

“I just think Chloe is a good girl, a little bit naive – could she be misled? I just don’t want to say to be honest,” she said. “If anything happened like that, I would say she was misled.”

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