Livincool’s Emanuele D’Angelo is Accused of Sexual Exploitation

Emanuele D’Angelo and some of the famous faces he’s photographed. Photos via Pinterest

The fashion industry is one that canonizes men, fluffing egos and bestowing incredible amounts of influence upon those it deems worthy. At best, it births legends and legacies of beautiful art. At worst, it creates monsters who abuse their power and exploit those they see as vulnerable.

It is also an industry that has perfected identifying people’s insecurities and selling “aspiration” in its place. Coupled with a foundation built on over-sexualizing bodies, especially those of women, it’s unsurprising that fashion has become rife with harrowing stories involving its upper echelons.

With numerous allegations against fashion photographers Terry Richardson, Mario Testino, Bruce Weber, and most recently designer Alexander Wang, sexual assault has more or less become one of the fashion industry’s dirty open secrets. How does one even begin to tackle the issue when predators seem to run rampant?

For Instagram account Shit Model Management, it’s all in a day’s work. “I have time today. Who needs exposing??,” read a frame from their Instagram stories in December of 2020. In the following story, a model alleged a photographer rubbed his genitals on her and then coerced her to have sex with him during Paris fashion week. Several other stories followed.

That photographer was Emanuele D’Angelo, known professionally as “Livincool”, and you’ve likely seen his photos on the feeds of the fashion industry’s brightest stars. Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid, Winnie Harlow, and Emily Ratajkowski are just some of the famous faces the Rome-born photographer has captured, the latter whom he calls his friend and muse, according to an interview with Highsnobiety. Often, he can be seen accompanying them during fashion weeks, vacations, and international film festivals.

Emily Ratajkowski, Bella Hadid, Winnier Harlow, and Kendall Jenner as photographed by Emanuele D’Angelo.

Since D’Angelo’s early days of photographing the London party scene in 2009, Livincool has evolved into a lifestyle brand often seen on influential friends like Hailey Beiber and Ratajkowski, who would model the line of jersey basics. With immense celebrity support and an endless feed of aspirational imagery, retailers like Galeries Lafayette in Paris and Selfridges in London have also taken note, stocking popular items like his cropped hoodies, which retail starting around $175.

But beneath the cool veneer of D’Angelo’s grainy, sun-drenched photos are the untold stories of numerous models who identify themselves as survivors of sexual assault. For this story, six women have agreed to share their experiences with the photographer. Their allegations include being coerced under false pretenses to shoot nude, being groped and coerced to have sex, having D’Angelo’s genitals rubbed on them, and being forced to rub his genitals. These are their stories.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

*Some names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Ellie

Ellie Fox was 19 when Emanuele D’Angelo reached out to her via social media in 2014. Having recently signed with an agency, she forwarded the request to her agent, who organized the shoot for July 3rd. “I was told it was a lingerie shoot for Agent Provocateur, not a test shoot, a nude shoot, or a shoot for Emanuele to take photos for his own portfolio," she said.

Having expectations of a professional shoot, Fox, who is now 26, was caught off guard when she arrived at the North London studio. “I arrived expecting there to be at least a make up artist and stylist there, but it was just him,” Fox said, adding that there wasn’t a private area to change. “Immediately I was a bit taken aback to be alone with this man. I’d only ever shot on my own with women,” she continued.

One of the looks D’Angelo gave her was a pair of panties with no top. “I looked at him confused. He just shrugged and gave me some nipple pasties. I was feeling very vulnerable already at this point,” she said. Fox described one shot where he directed her to cover her chest with a magazine. “No the pasties aren’t working, will you take them off?,” she recalled him asking as his tone became more demanding. Having never posed nude prior, she removed them carefully, trying not to expose herself from under the magazine.

As Fox changed into another look, D’Angelo said he “might as well” shoot her topless. “I thought this was a shoot for Agent Provocateur’s social channels, it didn’t make sense to me why nipples or nudity would need to be shown, but I complied, covering myself with my arms,” she said.

It wasn’t long before he asked Fox to remove her underwear as well, but this time, she didn’t comply. D’Angelo later photoshopped these images to look like she was completely nude. “When I saw the photo and how badly photoshopped it was, I was mortified. I felt like I’d been violated and taken advantage of — along with being coerced to go topless.”

Images of Fox, shot and photoshopped by D’Angelo to remove her underwear. Screenshots via Ellie Fox

After lunch, she felt like they were finally shooting what they had agreed upon when she was given a full lingerie set complete with a robe. “He takes a few photos, but then suddenly starts to grope my bum as he’s shooting from behind, telling me how ‘sexy and cute’ I am,” Fox recalled. “I twisted away but he was being adamant at this point and started touching my vagina.” Things started getting hazy from this point, she said.

“He grabs my hips and pulls me over to a sofa… I think I remember him asking me to gyrate my hips on him. Next thing I know, his trousers are around his ankles and he’s pulling his penis out of his underwear,” Fox said. “He pulled me down hard onto his lap, trying to manipulate my hips, and I just froze but made sure I kept my thighs tight together so that he couldn’t penetrate or touch me with his penis.”

“I don’t know how long I stayed there, but I remember getting up and he made a joke about ‘oh it’s too soon I guess’,” Fox said, before getting dressed in a state of embarrassment. Some time after the shoot, D’Angelo asked her to review the images with him over dinner. “He just kept staring at me and acting really shifty,” she said of their uncomfortable meeting.

He never showed her the images at dinner, instead calling her immature after she told him she wouldn’t sleep with him. “That was when he got up and left,” she continued. “I now realize that this ‘date’ was just a way for him to rid himself of the guilt or try to flatter me so that I wouldn’t report what had happened.“

Madelyn

Madelyn* was 22 when Emanuele D’Angelo asked her to shoot some lingerie for Agent Provocateur in 2014. She said the photographer told her he would send the photos to the brand, after claiming they had tasked him with scouting models for a campaign. Having known the photographer a little while, she says she felt comfortable at the start of their shoot. “He suggested we did some topless shots, which was fine. I’d done lingerie and topless before and I trusted him,” she said.

Through coercion and persuasion, the shoot eventually became fully nude, Madelyn recalled. “He'd say things like ‘this is what Agent Provocateur wants to see… they need to see your sexy side’,” she said. “It started with shots of me on a bed, and then the floor, and eventually I found myself stood up with my legs spread wide.” She remembers D’Angelo sweating profusely at one point. “I then clocked the raging boner bursting out of his jeans,” she said. “There was a big wet patch. He said it was my fault because I was ‘so fucking sexy’. He then took my foot and made me rub his dick with it. I was terrified at this point.”

“When I woke up in the morning he was grinding against me and suggested that we have sex. I kept saying no and that I had to go.”

With her clothes in the other room, Madelyn described feeling trapped as D’Angelo shot while blocking the door. “The photos were becoming more and more pornographic,” she said, adding that she felt fearful something worse would happen if she didn’t comply. “At one point he laid on the floor and had me stand over his camera so he could shoot me between the legs, asking me to touch myself.” She doesn’t remember much between that point and leaving the shoot, but she recalled walking down the street in a state of disorientation, confused and ashamed about what had just happened.

Having suppressed the experience, Madelyn spoke of a subsequent incident where she agreed to hang out with D’Angelo as friends. After going to a party together, they ended up at his hotel room, where she pretended to fall asleep after he began pressuring her to sleep with him. “When I woke up in the morning he was grinding against me and suggested that we have sex. I kept saying no and that I had to go,” she continued. “I remember him standing at the end of the bed naked, telling me that I too can get naked as he'd already seen me in the nude.” Exhausted by repeatedly turning down his advances, she eventually succumbed. “It was aggressive and I dissociated throughout.”

Sofia

Sofia* had met Emanuele D’Angelo in 2013 through a model friend from her agency and never sensed anything off as they had previously partied together in group settings. The following year, the photographer asked her to shoot an editorial for Agent Provocateur, which would take place in a room at the Mondrian hotel in London. “At the time I was pretty happy with this as he was shooting Emily Ratajkowski and I thought it would be a good step,” she said.

The day before their shoot, D’Angelo informed Sofia that the hotel had cancelled his booking and to come to his friend’s flat instead. Apprehensive, but not wanting to turn down an opportunity that could advance her career, she agreed. “I show up, there is no hair and makeup and he has one set of Agent Provocateur lingerie which he clearly bought for the shoot,” she said. “There was a friend at the flat and he asked her to leave, however she stayed.” Only a few shots in, D’Angelo abruptly ended the shoot, suggesting they try again another time.

“I always thought in situations I would be a fighter but at that moment it was like my mind went numb.”

Having hung out together a few times with the understanding that they were friends, Sofia agreed when D’Angelo asked her to meet again in 2015. She declined the wine he offered her immediately upon arrival, eventually gave in and drank one glass after being pressured. “Then he was like 'lets just do a quick shoot, it'll be so nice, the light is so good’,” she said. After a couple of headshots, she noted that his demeanor completely changed and he began pressuring her to take her top off, despite opposing numerous times. “He forced me to go topless and he rubbed my nipples so my ‘boobs look nice’.”

That’s when Sofia froze. “I always thought in situations I would be a fighter but at that moment it was like my mind went numb,” she said. “And then I was thinking maybe this is all my fault… I didn't go over there thinking this was a hookup, or even a photoshoot. I went over there because I thought we were friends just catching up.”

When Sofia’s mother called to ask when she would be catching the train home, she thought she had caught a break until D’Angelo intercepted the call with force. “He pulled me over while I was talking to her and was rubbing his crotch on me,” she said. “As soon as I got off the phone he was like ‘look how hard you got me baby’ while making these horrible panting moans and trying to get me to touch his dick.” She grabbed her things, told the photographer to “fuck off”, and ran.

“I always think if I didn't get a phone call what would have happened? Would I have had the courage to leave? Would I have been hurt? Or forced into something else?,” Sofia wondered. “Since that incident I’ve spoken to three other girls all based in London who have had similar experiences and none of us ever saw the photos he took,” she said. “I know he has a secret stash of wank bank pictures of girls he has victimized.”

Emily

No longer in the modeling scene, 29-year-old Emily Kretzer’s experience with Emanuele D’Angelo was unique in that the photographer never actually touched her. “I feel like I’m one of the luckier ones in that sense, but my experience with him haunted me and made me absolutely hate myself for years afterwards,” she said.

Kretzer described being subjected to a “humiliating, violating” ruse by D’Angelo in 2015 when she was 23. After being dropped from her agency, she was looking to rebuild her book and messaged the Livincool Instagram account about shooting together. Having admired his work, she was eager and excited to shoot when D’Angelo replied. They mutually agreed to shoot lingerie, which Kretzer was looking to complement her more commercial modeling work with.

For the shoot which would take place a few days later at John Lautner’s Sheats-Goldstein Residence in Los Angeles, Kretzer spent her own money for the lingerie and to get her makeup done professionally the day of. “I didn't have a lot of Instagram followers, I didn't have an agency at the time, and I wasn't an in-demand model, so I took the shoot incredibly seriously,” she said.

“When I arrived at James Goldstein's house on the day of the shoot, I was greeted by a man in a fedora who introduced himself to me as Emanuele,” Kretzer said, adding that his Instagram never seemed to feature any photos of himself. After some small talk and changing into a semi-sheer lingerie set, he directed her in various poses. “I felt slightly uncomfortable during the entirety of the shoot, but I figured it was just my nerves.” She powered through, with the hopes of impressing a photographer she so admired.

An image of Kretzer, shot by D’Angelo’s friend who posed as him in 2015. Photo via Emily Kretzer

After a couple hours, they stepped out to the property’s basketball court where another man greeted Kretzer and asked to take some photos of her shooting hoops in lingerie. “After he took his turn at a couple shots, the two men looked at each other and started hysterically laughing. I turned beet red,” she said, wondering if she had done something wrong or if her photos were bad. “All of a sudden, the man who had been playing basketball stepped forward and said, ‘I’m actually Emanuele. I just thought it would be funny to have my friend pretend to be me and shoot you instead’,” Kretzer recalled.

“I immediately started laughing along with them to hide my embarrassment and shame,” she said. “I had just spent hours and money that I didn't have, to shoot in an intimate setting with a man who wasn't a professional photographer and was a stranger who I didn't consent to taking photos of my semi-nude body.” By this point, she was shell shocked with the realization that D’Angelo never had any intention of shooting her.

According to Kretzer, D’Angelo’s friend began putting “not so subtle moves” on her when another woman arrived and began showing affection towards D’Angelo. She reiterated to his friend that she had a boyfriend in an attempt to dodge his advances. After watching the sunset together, she turned down a dinner invitation, eager to leave immediately. “Emanuele, clearly bothered, said ‘well, you're supposed to be my friend's date to dinner. Who is going to keep him company now?’,” she recalled. “Nausea flew up from my stomach into my throat.”

“I wept in my car for a good fifteen minutes before driving home. I felt so ashamed, foolish, stupid, and used… what I thought was a professional test shoot really turned out to be a scheme set up by Emanuele to pimp me out to his friend and have a cheap laugh at my expense,” Kretzer said, calling the experience dehumanizing. “Emanuele's vile joke of letting his friend to pretend to be him to take intimate photos of me, with no intention of helping me or my career, was a complete betrayal of my trust, my rights, and a gross violation of my young body.”

Ava

Ava* had been modeling for roughly five years when her agency in London set up a test shoot with D’Angelo in 2014. With steady commercial work and a string of higher profile jobs, she saw the potential career advancement that could come with shooting with a buzzy photographer.

Ava arrived on set and was met by D’Angelo and a friend of his who was also going to photograph her. There was no makeup artist or stylist, which was something she had encountered before on test shoots, and it didn’t immediately alarm her when his friend left after shooting her fully clothed. Alone with D’Angelo, she obliged his request to photograph her in an undergarment. “The first time he came over and touched me without warning was to pull down the straps on my undergarment, exposing my shoulders more,” she said. “This seemed to me, at the time, relatively innocent.”

Ava went on to describe the gradual steps that D’Angelo took to expose more of her body. “The next time he came over to remove more of my undergarment without asking,” she said. “I became tense. My breasts were now exposed.” Thinking the shoot would be over soon if she complied for a few more photos, she found herself compromised further when D’Angelo approached her a third time. “He came over and touched me without my consent and took off my whole undergarment,” she continued. “At no point had this been discussed and at no point was I asked if this was appropriate or comfortable for me to do.”

Following the shoot, Ava searched for ways to rationalize what had happened. “I left having convinced myself this was completely normal in the industry and that many models would’ve done this before me and not ‘made a fuss’ or ‘been difficult’,” she said. “He’d been calm and friendly throughout the interaction, so I thought I was in the wrong for having felt uncomfortable about the situation.”

“I remember being extremely shocked but instantly thinking I couldn’t let him know that. I had to pretend everything was fine and normal. If I did that, then maybe it would be.”

A few months later, D’Angelo approached Ava to shoot some lingerie, to which she agreed, having suppressed her prior experience. “Maybe this time I would be more in control,” she told herself. After meeting at his friend’s flat in East London, he showed her the lingerie from Agent Provocateur, a brand he claimed to be collaborating with.

“I don’t recall him once coming over and touching me without my consent,” she said. “He didn’t remove any items of my lingerie himself. The more comfortable I felt the more I convinced myself it was me making a fuss over nothing the last time.” When asked to take her bra off, Ava complied. “I agreed as this is something that when asked, I was comfortable to consent to,” she said. “He had given me back control over making that decision.”

Ava then detailed the moment D’Angelo crossed the line. “He began taking pictures until, without any warning whatsoever, and absolutely no motivation from my end, walked over to me, sucked my right nipple for a few seconds and walked back to where he had been standing,” she said. “I’m sorry I just couldn’t help myself,” she recalled D’Angelo saying. At that moment she froze and said her brain went into overdrive. “I remember being extremely shocked but instantly thinking I couldn’t let him know that. I had to pretend everything was fine and normal. If I did that, then maybe it would be.”

Ava mentally buried the incident until 2016, when she and her friends were sharing stories about uncomfortable situations they had endured. “The look of shock on their faces made me realize this had in fact been an incident of sexual assault,” she said. “I had never invited him to touch me in any way. He took it from me instead. He was in a position of power with a duty of care, and he abused and manipulated the situation and myself for his own personal gain.”

Alexus

Shooting content casually with local photographers in New York City, Alexus Ade had amassed around 30,000 followers on Instagram by 2018. By her standards, it was small enough that it surprised her when Emanuele D’Angelo reached out to offer some of his LIVINCOOL-branded merch in exchange for reposting.

Seeing his portfolio of influential faces in the modeling industry, she felt okay to meet him when he suggested a pub in SoHo. After finishing one drink with the photographer, she was surprised to find that he hadn’t actually brought the merch with him. “He asked if I was okay to go with him to the flat that he was staying in, which was maybe a two to three minute walk from the pub we were at,” she said.

With no intention of staying, Ade agreed to head upstairs to pick up the merch in the SoHo loft, but once inside, the tone began to shift. “He started to get a little weird and was like ‘Oh, why don't we sit down? Let’s have another drink’,” she said. D’Angelo began taking off his pants, which felt off to her, but she assumed he was only trying to get more comfortable. “In my head, I’ll get the merch after the one drink and just go home,” she remembered thinking in that moment.

“He sat next to me and started to rub my leg and things like that… it got very strange,” Ade said. “And then he started to just take my clothes off and I didn't know what to do.” She said she wanted to scream, but doing so would make the whole situation more of a reality. “In those moments, you don't want to believe that someone would rape you or take advantage of you, so I didn't really say anything.”

“I just wish I had ignored the Instagram message. I would have saved myself a lifetime of pain.”

“I remember he started to kiss me and he went down on me. I wasn't making any noise because I was so uncomfortable,” Ade continued. “Then he tried to have sex with me, but that's when I was like, I can’t. I can't lay here like a doll and just allow this to happen to me, so I kind of started to fight back. I was like, no, please stop.”

At this point, she says she stood up on the bed and backed away from D’Angelo to assert herself. “Once I started to put up a fight and say no, I think he was like, okay, I don't really want anyone to fight me or to scream,” she said. “So, I got down off the bed, put on my clothes and I said I'm going home.” On her way back, she cried.

In processing the aftermath, Ade noted their disparate reactions to the events that occurred. “I struggled with it for a while, because it just looked like he didn't care and like he didn’t do anything wrong. There was no fear in his eyes. It almost made me feel crazy,” she said. “Maybe I gave him the wrong idea, but I couldn't figure out how. I blamed myself for ever going to the apartment because I felt like he knew the entire time that was what was going to happen.”

It was an incident that changed her in many ways, particularly her relationship with social media platforms, which predators seem to continue co-opting for exploitive purposes. “It puts a certain kind of fear in your mind and you do a lot of things differently,” Ade said. “I used to love doing small photo shoots at the beach or the canyons in LA, but after this I stopped doing a lot of that. I realized that I don't even want the social media kind of life, because it's just a really dark world to live in.” Not long after the incident with D’Angelo, she deleted her Instagram.

Ade also described her trust issues with making new friends, especially men. “Rather than be hurt, I would rather just put the space there, because at least it's safe,” she said. “It's really sad to think like that because it's natural to want to make friends and to want to be comfortable with the people you meet,” she added. “I just wish I had ignored the Instagram message. I would have saved myself a lifetime of pain.”

A Certain Level of Respect

While these six women’s stories already share alarmingly similar details, they have been independently corroborated through evidence including screenshots of their correspondences with Emanuele D’Angelo and digital images of their photo sessions. Their accounts are a sharp contrast from media profiles of the photographer.

In a digital feature with fashion and lifestyle publication #Legend, D’Angelo was asked how he keeps his photos sensual, but never raunchy. “I always keep this concern in mind, I don’t like photos that are too sexual,” he said. “I think it comes down to my main goal being the images of women should be for women. I’m a straight, male, Italian photographer – so having that softer point of view, makes it empowering and aspirational, rather than catering to the boys.”

“It also depends on the environment you’re in,” D’Angelo said when asked how he keeps good relationships with his subjects. “Sometimes the atmosphere makes it difficult to shoot someone, there should be a certain level of respect for one another.”

At the time of publishing, Emanuele D’Angelo did not return our request for comment on the allegations.

Agent Provocateur, the British lingerie company who D’Angelo claimed to be working with in various capacities, denied having any connection with him. “We have no current or past working relationship with the photographer Emanuele D’Angelo/Livincool,” a representative said via e-mail, though reposts of his photographs featuring their lingerie can be found on their Instagram from 2014.

The Psychology of a Predator

The allegations against D’Angelo are only the latest in a string of high profile sexual assault and harassment scandals within the fashion industry. Though recent allegations against Alexander Wang only came to a head in December 2020 when male model Owen Mooney posted a TikTok about a past experience being groped by the designer in a New York City nightclub, more claims about Wang can be found on Twitter dating back to 2017. Notably, the accounts shared strikingly consistent details in the patterns of exploitation, which often included drugging and groping.

When framed in context with the allegations against fashion photographers Terry Richardson, Bruce Weber, Mario Testino, and Marcus Hyde, similarly insidious patterns appear, and they’re often highly calculated, repeat behaviors. Though not unique to members of the fashion industry, these patterns can be more broadly indicative of organized predators with psychopathic personalities.

Dr. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and consultant to the FBI for two decades, provided further insight for this piece. ”[Psychopathic predators] tend to live in a world of one, and any kind of relationships they have are a goal directed toward their own satisfaction, regardless of what degree the victim is going to be exploited,” he said. “In some cases, if they can provoke fear or anxiety in the victim, that can also be very sexually arousing, so they orchestrate their behavior to evoke that kind of response.”

“The power and control over the women can be a very strong adrenaline rush for these individuals. In a sense, they get addicted to their own biochemistry.”

Psychopathic predators in particular often lack a conscience and act without guilt or remorse, but some will draw a line before their behavior crosses into criminality. “They want to maintain their career and also their ability to have sexual contact with these women, but not in an overtly criminal way that could blow apart their career,” Dr. Meloy said. For example, avoiding overt, forceful rape and psychologically coercing someone into having sex instead, is one way a predator can preserve their ability to exploit victims.

There may also be some biological explanations for their behavior. “The power and control over the women can be a very strong adrenaline rush for these individuals. In a sense, they get addicted to their own biochemistry,” Dr. Meloy suggests. “It’s a feeling of omnipotence over the woman as they're controlling her and they want to return to that.”

In a sense, a photographer’s resulting photographs could aid them in returning to that feeling. “In their mind, they can with a photograph, go back and revisit exactly what happened and how she looked. Those photos then become something to masturbate to and they rekindle the event and get sexually aroused again,” he said.

Speaking Up

Having to relive the trauma of sexual assault is reason enough that many survivors choose not to share their story or report it to authorities. According to a Department of Justice analysis of crime victimization in 2016, an estimated 80 percent of rape and sexual assaults go unreported. Additionally, the fear of retaliation and a belief that police will do little to help are cited by RAINN as two of the most common reasons the crimes are not reported.

As with any industry or workplace with extreme power differentials, the status and influence of a lauded fashion designer or photographer can further gag a victim into silence. In hindsight, Ade, who now does celebrity and editorial beauty work through her business Palmpered, sees the incident with D’Angelo with more clarity. “It’s the fear you have that maybe no one else will ever want to work with you. Maybe the world will judge you, maybe no one will book you again, or maybe your manager will fire you,” she said. “You look at someone like him and the kind of close friends he has, and if they want to bury you or make you the liar, it can be done so easily.”

But even as predators are being exposed in the fashion industry, there’s still a tendency for the underlying issues to be swept under the rug. As an institution, fashion rarely ever makes space for productive conversations about fixing its own toxic ecosystem. Leading publications like Vogue for instance, seem forced to respond only in the aftermath of scandals that involve people they’ve helped catapult into power, and often they do more in allowing perpetrators to actively minimize survivors rather than support or validate them.

Meanwhile, individual survivors, organizations like The Model Alliance, and Instagram watchdogs remain on the fringe, shouldering the burden and risk of amplifying important issues. The nature of the work is one of the reasons the owner of Shit Model Management has remained anonymous since 2016. As a young, frustrated model, they created the account as a means of coping with the pent up anger stemming from the lack of respect they personally experienced and observed in the modeling industry.

“90% of my DMs are of models giving me testimonials of struggles they’ve faced and they’re asking me to do something about it,” the account owner said of their day-to-day since publishing their infamous blacklist in 2018. “It’s very hard to ignore them, and so when I have the time, I go all in and start exposing as many bad people in the industry as I can.”

“Women who aren’t famous models or celebrities get treated differently… it’s about time that those who have lived with their stories in the shadows are heard.”

In the fallout after the allegations against Alexander Wang, wherein the designer denounced the anonymous accusations as false and fabricated, Shit Model Management further elucidated the choice of anonymity on Twitter. “Remember, these people that came forth with allegations are not anonymous to ME. They’re real people in the industry, some are even top models,” read the tweet. “They want to remain anonymous to protect their careers, not because they’re lying.”

Of the six women we spoke to, the three who decided to maintain their anonymity cited reasons such as working in a new field that requires them to maintain private social media channels, or a fear of retaliation or not being believed. Additionally, a seventh survivor withdrew her involvement after revisiting the assault became too emotionally taxing.

“I don't yet trust that we're in a place societally where victims of sexual assault are believed and protected, or where people like Emanuele are held fully accountable for their actions and reprimanded sufficiently,” Madelyn said of her decision to protect her identity. “Mario Testino has managed to shake off his controversies like water off a duck's back, and I have a feeling Emanuele is going to walk away from this scot-free with his supermodel friends, influence, and brand intact.”

On her decision to go on the record about Emanuele D’Angelo, Kretzer, who is now a director and filmmaker, said she knew going on the record was the right thing to do when she saw the stories from other survivors on Shit Model Management. “Women who aren’t famous models or celebrities get treated differently by these respected photographers, and it’s about time that those who have lived with their stories in the shadows are heard,” she said.

Having made major lifestyle changes since the incident with D’Angelo, Ade had originally planned to remain anonymous to protect her well-being until she began to feel the burden compounding. “Just carrying the weight of knowing the anonymous person is me, is a different kind of guilt and heaviness,” she said. “You put it on yourself, you feel like it's your fault, and you think that if you don't say anything, it will just go away.”

Coincidentally, it was an incident with her partner that emboldened her to fully reconcile her relationship with the trauma. While on a trip to Los Angeles together in 2020, Ade described her horror the moment her partner showed her an Instagram message she received from D’Angelo. Similarly, he was also offering free merch in exchange for reposting.

“I nearly had a heart attack. It was that same feeling I felt the night I left, like your heart is in your stomach and you can barely breathe and you're shaking,” she said. “If anything had happened to them, I would have felt like it was my responsibility and my fault because I didn’t give them information that could protect them.” Seeing her visibly triggered state, Ade’s partner immediately blocked D’Angelo.

Just prior to publishing this article, and with the support of her partner, Ade said she was finally ready to release herself from the burden of the trauma. “I just want to be completely free from it. I want to take back that power. I want to not feel guilty and I want to love myself,” she said. “I want everything that was before this happened to me, and I think the only way I can get that is by allowing myself to be me and telling my story.”

If you or someone you know has been sexually harassed or assaulted, below is a list of resources that can help. Please also consider donating to these organizations if you are able.

RAINN (U.S.)

The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network (RAINN) organizes the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline that can put you in contact with your local rape crisis center. You can call the Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or access RAINN’s chat service on their website.

National Sexual Violence Resource Center (U.S.)

The National Sexual Violence Resource Center has a directory of sexual assault coalitions, victim/survivor support organizations, and local organizations with culturally-specific support by state. The organizations can give survivors information about access to healthcare and laws in their specific location.

Rape Crisis (U.K.)

Rape Crisis England & Wales (RCEW) is a feminist organisation that supports the work of their 39 Rape Crisis Centres across England and Wales. Rape Crisis Centres provide frontline specialist, independent and confidential services for women and girls of all ages who've experienced any form of sexual violence, at any time in their lives. Over half of these centers also provide services for male survivors of sexual violence.

Celebrity Photographer LIVINCOOL aka Emanuele D’Angelo is Accused of Sexual Exploitation