Nude teen photographer denies raping girl models
DAVID HAMILTON, the British photographer known for his soft-focus portraits of underage, unclothed girls, has denied allegations by a French radio host and three other women that he raped them as teenagers.
Flavie Flament, a presenter on RTL radio, alleged that the photographer, now 83, assaulted her when she was 13 in Cap d’Agde, southern France, in the mid-Eighties after persuading her parents to let him work alone with her.
She recounted the alleged rape in a book, The Consolation, out last month. While she did not name Mr Hamilton in the work, she put his photograph of her as a girl on its cover. She has since confirmed she was referring to him after being contacted by other women with near-identical allegations.
“When I chose with my publisher to put this photo on the cover, I knew that it would prompt other testimonies,” Ms Flament, 42, told France 2.
Mr Hamilton said he was “particularly outraged by the total absence of respect of the presumption of innocence”. He said he would “make no further comment on criminal behaviour that certain people attribute to him and of which he is not the author”.
In interviews with Nouvel Obs, the weekly magazine, two alleged victims recounted how Mr Hamilton had approached them in the Eighties while they were on holiday with their parents in Cap d’Agde, where the photographer had bought a flat.
“When he offered to do a trial shoot, my father was so proud, his eyes were twinkling,” said one woman called Alice.
Alice said the first shoot took place in the presence of her father and Mr Hamilton’s former wife Gertrude. However, for the second shoot they were alone.
“Can you keep a secret?” he allegedly whispered. “I was very uneasy and very intimated,” she told Nouvel Obs, re- counting how he went on to rape her.
Ms Flament and the other women said they felt too “guilty” and “ashamed” to tell their parents. The other girl, Lucie, told her parents she wanted to stop after two sessions.
In 1997, Alice filed a legal complaint against Mr Hamilton. He denied wrongdoing and the inquiry was dropped.
A third woman contacted Nouvel Obs claiming that Mr Hamilton raped her in 1967 when she was 14.
Under French law, the age limit for pressing for charges of rape of a minor is 38, meaning that the women have passed the statute of limitations.