Five male models filed a lawsuit Friday accusing photographer Bruce Weber of sex trafficking and molesting them under the promise of helping their careers.
Attorney Lisa Bloom, who filed a sexual harassment case against Weber a year ago on behalf of model Jason Boyce, is also representing the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit.
Jayne Weintraub, an attorney for Weber, called the accusations “outrageous.”
“Bruce Weber has never lured, recruited, or forced anyone to do anything and has never inappropriately touched a model,” Weintraub said.
“This lawsuit is nothing more than a media-hungry lawyer’s attempt to extort Mr. Weber with false, fictitious and legally frivolous claims,” Weintraub added. “We are confident that Mr. Weber will prevail against these false allegations; not just with words, but with evidence in a court of law.”
Bloom said the five new plaintiffs all had “strikingly similar allegations against Mr. Weber.”
“The new case was filed under the federal sex trafficking law, which has recently been interpreted to prohibit ‘casting couch’ behavior in which a powerful person sexually exploits a vulnerable job applicant for his own sexual gratification.”
She said the law has a 10-year statute of limitations, if other victims want to come forward.
The lawsuit said Weber used a “breathing exercise” to facilitate touching. It said he would touch their genitals under the pretext of the exercise.
Weber’s work has appeared in Vanity Fair, American Vogue, Interview, Italian Vogue, French Vogue and GQ, as well as London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
Boyce filed a lawsuit in December 2017 against Weber, saying that the photographer pressured him to take off his clothes and touch his genitals. Boyce “suffered humiliation, emotional anguish and lost economic opportunities, including the end of his modeling career in New York,” the suit says.
Weber used Instagram to “unequivocally” deny Boyce’s accusations.