I’m not lying, says model accused of fake kidnap
Woman rejects ‘hurtful’ claims she made up Italian ordeal in which she was drugged and handcuffed
A BRITISH model has hit out at “hurtful lies” accusing her of fabricating her kidnap ordeal and for smiling in the days following her release.
Chloe Ayling, 20, has spoken of her week-long ordeal in which she said she was drugged with ketamine, handcuffed and gagged by men threatening to sell her as a sex slave.
She said she was taken by men wearing balaclavas and chained to a chest of drawers in a remote Italian farmhouse after being lured to Milan with the promise of a modelling contract.
But critics questioned her account and accused her of faking the kidnap as a publicity stunt to further her career.
Since her release over a week ago she has faced more abuse for smiling for the cameras.
“It has been so frustrating and hurtful to have people not believe me and cast doubt on what I have been through,” she told the Mail On Sunday newspaper.
“So many lies have been said. But I know the truth, the police know the truth and it will all come out at the trial.
“People were criticising me for smiling when I was photographed back home – but why wouldn’t I smile? I survived.”
Her account has been challenged by some after she was seen buying shoes with Lukasz Herba, her alleged captor, and laughing and joking with him in coffee shops and for admitting to sharing a bed with him during her ordeal.
But in an interview yesterday, the model claims she was “desperate” to try to “build a bond” with him in the hope he would set her free.
“I understand why people have questions. People need to understand that everything I did was so I could survive,” she said.
“I was in a crazy situation and I was terrified.”
Miss Ayling alleges she was put in a bag in the boot of a car by kidnappers who then tried to to sell her as a sex slave in an online auction.
She says it was the “worst day of my life” when her captors told her they were part of an online organisation called “Black Death” and threatened to sell her on the “dark web” if her agent refused to pay a ransom of $300,000 (£270,000).
“I was in shock. That will always be the worst day of my life,” she said. “Then he said he wanted to help me because I had been taken by mistake. He asked me what my family had to offer. It was just me and mum at home; there was no way we could afford a ransom.
“I gave him the names of three people who might help.”
She was told that she would probably be trafficked to the Middle East where, once the man who bought her bored of her, she would be passed on to someone else or fed to the tigers. Mr Herba, 30, a Polish national who lives in the UK, was arrested by police and confessed to the kidnapping, which investigators described as an elaborate plot that involved months of planning.
His home in Oldbury, in the West Midlands, has been raided by British officers.
It was reported last night that Dr Giovanna Campanile, a magistrate in Milan, had ruled Mr Herba was “highly dangerous to society” and should remain in custody ahead of his trial later this year.
“There is grave evidence of the guilt of the arrested person, who has admitted to the Public Prosecutor that he was involved in the kidnap,” he said.
It is claimed Mr Herba has also implicated nine men in the plot, three from Birmingham, but has made no mention of Miss Ayling.
She told Italian police that she met Mr Herba, who she knew by a different name, a few months earlier on a photo shoot that was aborted in Paris.
He then rebooked it through her agent to take place in Milan on July 11, but when she turned up at the abandoned building she was attacked.
She added: “People might think I’m gullible. It’s easy to say that if you’ve not been through what I’ve been through.”
She was later released and driven to the British Consulate in Milan on July 17.