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Hey, it's Nora McInerney, host of The Head Start, Embracing the Journey. This is season two. And if you're new here, these are real conversations with real people living with chronic migraine. This is a show that creates a little more space for empathy and understanding around asking questions and asking for help.
So don't wait. Jump into the conversation and learn a little more about life with chronic migraine. Listen to the Head Start Embracing the Journey on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Yeah, shall we? Let's go. He's a bit kind of...
We're just leaving the house of Jim Jacobson, accused of being the main fixer in this entire operation. We tracked him down to a wooden lakeside home in rural Wisconsin. My heart's racing.
We're just pulling away. Just had a half-hour chat with Jim Jacobson, the middleman for Mike Jeffries and Matthew Smith. We told him who we are and why we've come and that we've heard allegations from the people we've talked to about his time recruiting young men for the sexual gratification of the Abercrombie guys. We want to know if he'll record an interview.
I don't know if he's going to talk. He's asked for us to leave his name out of it and maybe, maybe then he'll consider telling his perspective. Obviously we can't make those guarantees but I did sort of say to him, you know, even if we were to do that, how do you think Mike Jeffries and Matthew Smith are going to respond? Will they leave your name out of this?
Producer Ruth and I stood on his doorstep, talking and talking. The conversation went round in circles. I asked a question, he dodged it. A carousel of no comment, no comment, no comment. I challenged him where I could, and didn't get very far. He was tight-lipped, but the little he did give away was tantalising.
What's clear is Jim didn't have a clue we were looking into this. He was shocked to see us. I honestly thought he would have got a tip off by now about, I mean, it's been two and a half years. Like, I really thought somebody would have reached out to the middleman to let him know that this was going on. At one point, as I told him we planned to name him in our investigation, he sank down and sat on his front step.
putting his head in his hands. When he sat down on the set, it must be such a shock out of blue. Like, he did seem genuinely shocked. I mean, he knew what we were talking about. I don't know what more we could have done, to be honest, because he wasn't playing ball. Jim kept saying, "Leave my name out and I'll tell you everything." But he also said he doesn't know a lot. It feels like he's trying to have it both ways. I'm pretty sure there'll be no deal.
But I say I'll check with my bosses. I want to keep him talking, so I send him a follow-up message, asking if we can meet again. Every time my phone beeps, I jump. Is it Jim again? The tension is killing me. Then another text comes through. It's him. He's just texted back. He wants to meet in one hour at a local coffee shop. I ever need him to talk. I have no idea how this is going to go. But yeah, I've got one hour to go.
Yeah, I'm feeling it. I feel like this is going to be our last chance to engage with him. On our way, we talk through what we're going to say. And how we hope he'll keep talking to us. Absolutely. I think we just play it soft, neutral.
We're still in evidence-gathering mode, so we decide to go in low, agree to meet, notebooks in hand, for a face-to-face, and send our security guy, Joe, ahead to scope out the location. He's already in there. Joe said you just said hi to Jim. What? Joe said, I just said hi to him, walked in the coffee shop, he's right in front of me, he didn't recognise me. I altered my appearance and I'm just sitting down there. He says hi to everyone, to be fair.
We pull up in the car park outside the coffee shop. I can already see him sitting there, shaking his head. He's got sandy grey hair and is wearing khaki shorts and a black golf shirt. I don't know how this is going to play out. I'm hoping he'll agree to an interview, so we'll leave cameraman Adam in the back seat just in case. Oh, I think he sees me. He's looking at us.
He absolutely is looking at us. Yeah, of course he is because he knows we can't. I think we've got this, Ruth. We don't need to overthink it. But we need to know what he told the men and we need to know the money trail. You ready? OK, let's go. Let's go. I don't need my bag. I've just got this. We've thought about this moment for so long now. And what happens next is hands down one of the most compelling and at times odd conversations of my life.
Jim asked to speak off the record, but I'm clear that everything we talk about has to be on the record and we go ahead on that basis. Producer Ruth and I took really detailed notes throughout this meeting. So these are Jim's words, but spoken by an actor. Can we get you a coffee? I'm OK, thanks. We're chit-chatting about the weather and what life was like here in Wisconsin during the pandemic.
But the clock's ticking and I need to get to the point of why we're here, to talk about the Abercrombie guys, Jeffreys and Smith. What was your view of Michael and Matthew as people? I don't see how I could tell you things I don't know. We wouldn't have come all this way after two years of work if we were bluffing, to be frank. I'm not going to be named and I will tell you everything.
We can't guarantee that, but if you do speak to us, I can tell you we will be fair and accurate. I appreciate there's a leap of faith here on your part. Sweetheart, you're a journalist. I know what you're doing. I'm the one taking a leap of faith. I'm taking a leap of faith off a cliff.
From the BBC, this is World of Secrets. Season one, The Abercrombie Guys, with me, Rhianna Croxford. A BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Panorama investigation. Episode seven, Do You Remember Me? The coffee shop where I meet Jim is just off a highway. One of those cookie cutter chains you see dotted all over America.
Not the setting I imagined meeting a man, we've been told, helped run an elaborate operation on behalf of people as wealthy as Mike Jeffries and Matthew Smith. I ask Jim if he feels loyal to them. Maybe that's why he's holding back. But he replies... I'm loyal to myself. I want to find out who was funding Jim's part of the operation. Who gave him the money to pay the guys he was auditioning?
The money, did it come out of your pocket for the recruiters, the referral fees, or did it come from Michael and Matthew? I'm a pretty honourable guy. I do not want my life interrupted. I hear that, but there are men out there whose lives have been disrupted and damaged by this. Nobody went into this without their eyes wide open. Nobody. Why? What did you tell them to expect? I can tell you what they weren't going to expect. A tea party.
I'm explaining that the allegations that have been made against him are serious, and we want to hear his side of the story. So if he wants to respond, here's his chance. We've heard people say they felt exploited, that they were misled by you, that you presented yourself as a gatekeeper to A&F. You've been told a lot of hooey. Nobody was ever misled by me. How much are these guys getting paid? Oh, we don't pay for stories. That's not how we work. It's raining now, but I press on.
He seems surprised when I tell him there are men prepared to go public about their experience with the Abercrombie guys. Everybody went into everything I know about with their eyes wide open. There was never coercion. Why do you say that? Because there was never any coercion. What does coercion mean to you? That means I tell you I'm going to give you a lemonade, but I give you a cup of coffee. I mean, that's bait and switch.
Bait and switch is when you hook someone in with the promise of one thing and then swap it out for something else and not what they were expecting. Again, Jim says everybody knew what they were doing, adding that people could get out at any time. He then says... By now, the rain is really pouring down.
We're sitting beneath an awning outside the coffee shop, but it's barely covering us, and there's a near-constant drip, drip of water running down my back. I ask again to get a clear answer about the money. The money he gave to recruiters and to the men he auditioned. Was it out of his own pocket, or was it coming from the Abercrombie guys? Where was the money coming from? Was it coming from Michael and Matthew? There was no accountability on my part.
Look, if I'm wrong about anything, please tell me. Did the money come from Michael and Matthew? At this point, Jim nods. All of it, he nods again. This is very significant because if the money was coming from Mike Jeffries and Matthew Smith, then it corroborates the idea that this operation was being run for them.
Jim then asks me for the names of the men I've spoken to. I tell him no. Do you think you'd remember them? Some. I might, yeah. No, I will tell you this. The allegations that you have set against me are patently false. Why would they be false? Because they didn't happen. There's no mystery here. There's no coercion. There was no bait and switch. Whoever told you that is bullshitting.
We end up talking to Jim Jacobson for more than two hours. For a lot of that time, there were denials, and he either refused to answer or deflected our questions. He told me he'd had no communication with Mike Jeffries or Matthew Smith since 2015 and has no idea where they are now.
But he also tried to turn on the charm, admiring my shorthand, telling us how likeable we are, praising my interviewing skills. He confirms he did some work on Broadway and even cracked a joke that the only acting job he could get these days is as a James Bond villain, gesturing to his missing nose. He then slipped into a bunch of accents, as if to jokingly convince us he could do an anonymous interview by changing his voice.
Given the seriousness of the allegations made by the men I've met, at times his demeanour felt bizarre. I guess he was trying to pull out all the stops. But the one thing Jim kept coming back to was his desire to do a deal. Leave my name out of it and I'll tell you everything. I lost track of the number of times he asked. We can't do a deal. And as we leave, Jim says one last thing. I've had many experiences.
Some I wouldn't repeat and other things I would do again in a heartbeat. It's like taking an inventory of your behavior. You have to own it. Maybe you consider it a mistake, a horrible thing, but you pull your socks up and if you need to talk to your therapist about it, talk to your therapist about it. The next day, we confirmed to Jim there would be no deal to keep his name out of it. We didn't speak to him again.
Leaving Wisconsin, I think about all the evidence I've gathered during this investigation. The documents, the emails, the dozens of conversations I've had, trying to make sense of it all, to see the bigger picture. I still have so many questions. If I'm investigating this case, I'm looking at three things mainly. One, the money. You always follow the money. Second, the money.
I want to get telephone records of all of the men. And three, and probably most importantly, emails. Because emails don't go away. We'll be back after this. Hey, let me ask you something. Have you heard George's podcast? Me and Ben Brick are back with a blast. This time with stories from Africa's past. Not too distant, unsolved mysteries. Unsung heroes from untold histories. I'm trying to make sense of the present day. Join me on this journey by pressing play.
Have you heard George's podcast? Chapter 4. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hey, I hear you think podcasts are all about true crime, huh? Well, wise guy, the iHeartRadio app's got all kinds of podcasts. We got Stuff You Should Know and Stuff They Don't Want You To Know. We got Bobby Bones, Big Boy, and Lou Later. We got SpongeBob Binge Pants and Exotic Erotic Storytime. We got Doughboys, Two Dudes in the Kitchen, Green Eggs and Dan. Hey, we got ElfQuest.
We got podcasts for everything on the iHeartRadio app for free. If you don't download that, well, that's not just a true crime, my friend. That's criminal. One thing that was remarkable about Abercrombie was they were a brand that liked to kind of discover people. They were not using...
seasoned, experienced, established models. They were plucking people from obscurity from, you know, the farm in Kentucky and putting them on that set. And so they were often dealing with extremely inexperienced, naive, young models. That's Sarah Ziff. She runs a non-profit in New York called The Model Alliance that campaigns for the fair treatment of people in the fashion industry.
She's talking about the models in Abercrombie's stores and in their campaigns. My investigation is about men who attended events hosted by the company's CEO and his partner. Most of them were aspiring models. Some were struggling to find work or not getting paid for bookings. Many said they had already had abusive experiences in the industry before they met the Abercrombie guys. Sarah says abuse isn't uncommon in the fashion world. I think it's
most people when they look at the modeling industry they think that it's very glamorous and that people are well paid and I think anyone who's a model who's complaining about bad working conditions people would say you know play me the tiniest violin how bad can it be I get it
But the reality is you're dealing with a young workforce of people who are often being put into compromising situations and who really don't have basic rights and protections. It's a recipe for abuse.
Sarah worked as a model for more than a decade for some of the world's biggest brands. She says the positive aspects of the fashion industry are obvious. Fame, money, glamour. But the exploitation? Well, that was less spoken about until... The Me Too movement was an awakening. Finally there was this silence that was being lifted and it felt like these...
powerful individuals who seemed untouchable were finally being held accountable or called out at least. And I don't think that men have quite had their Me Too movement. I think that male models have a tough time because they face a double stigma. Sarah says some people struggle to see men as vulnerable to exploitation.
It can be about stereotypes. Men being expected to be strong to fight back. People want to see a perfect victim where everything is black and white. And in the modeling industry, particularly in an environment like the one that we're describing, young people are being kind of like put in an impossible situation.
where their job is to be attractive and easygoing and willing to show off their bodies, and there are no clear boundaries around what's fair game and what's not. When your future in an industry depends on your relationships with established individuals in that industry, it's really hard if you are put on the spot to take your clothes off or propositioned.
For nearly three years, I've been investigating allegations of exploitation and abuse by powerful men once at the top of the fashion industry. I've spoken to men who say they were recruited into a dark world created to satisfy the sexual fantasies of Mike Jeffries, the former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch and his British partner, Matthew Smith.
Based on the evidence I've gathered, the testimonies, emails and travel itineraries, this seems to have been going on for at least six years, between 2009 and 2015, and on an international scale. What would a lawyer make of what I've been told? Brad Edwards is a high-profile civil lawyer in the United States.
He's best known for representing victims of Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison awaiting trial charged with abusing underage girls. He's agreed to look at the evidence I've gathered during this investigation. Given what I've read, I would like to see a legal investigation unfold because there's only so much that you can uncover without subpoena power.
If it's okay now, I'd like to ask you to look at the somewhat heavily redacted piece of paper there. Overall, how would you characterize the events they describe? From the mindset of some of these men, this is not the construct of a consensual sexual encounter. It has the hallmarks of a coercive sexual encounter.
Consensual sex happens where both parties are on even or near even footing and have the ability to retreat. In this particular situation, the disparity of power could not be greater. On the one hand, you have these men, and at the other, you have the head of Abercrombie & Fitch, which was one of the most powerful fashion companies in the world at the time.
All the men I've spoken to who attended an event with Mike Jeffries and Matthew Smith say they were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements. Having somebody sign an NDA, give them very little time to read it, that piece of paper isn't worth a whole lot, but psychologically it's a constraining device.
I'm under somebody else's control. I can't say anything about this ever, or I run risk of serious financial harm. So NDAs are the work of the powerful to control the vulnerable. I also asked Brad what he makes of some of the men I've spoken to going to more than one event with the Abercrombie guys. It's extremely common. The reasons you normally see for returning is, one, I already did it.
I did it, they broke me down, I have no self-worth anymore, I have no self-esteem, I really am worthless. Number two is the money. Okay, I got money, I want to make sure that I can justify what just happened to me. And then the third is the carrot that was continuing to be dangled. It is, hey wait, you've already come this far. This was terrible, but what, you're gonna turn back now and not get the reward?
What would you like to see happen next?
Given the stories of these brave men that have come forward, I think it's very important that federal prosecutors look into this case. The events that are described by the men could be sex trafficking. People used to think of sex trafficking as chaining somebody to a wall, and that's just not what it is.
Under US law, sex trafficking includes getting an adult to travel to a different state or country to have sex for money by using force, fraud or coercion. Fraud could be bringing some of these men into these sex parties under the belief, which turned out to be false, that they have a chance of being a real Abercrombie & Fitch model. There may have been evidence of coercion for some of the men, whereas others might not have.
felt the coercive tactics. Remember coercion is the reasonable belief that serious harm will be inflicted and serious harm could be reputational harm, financial harm, physical harm. Mr. Jeffries may argue that he believed that these men who came to these events were willing and were consenting. What do you say to that?
What could Mike Jeffries say? It's consenting adults. This was voluntary sex and this isn't sex trafficking. The fact that some of the men have had sex for money in the past, it is a factor. It looks more consensual. Before meeting Mike Jeffries, David had briefly performed in porn and Barrett had been paid for sex.
The fact that somebody has engaged in commercial sex in the past is really irrelevant to whether or not the particular commercial sex act at issue was caused by force, fraud, or coercion. But the devil is in the details. The burden is very high for the prosecutors. They have to prove each element beyond and to the exclusion of every reasonable doubt. So cases like this are always difficult to prosecute.
We're on the interstate, driving away from New York City, heading east towards Long Island on America's Atlantic coast. This is the route that the men would have taken on their way to the Hamptons. I've barely seen anybody. It's so rural. It's so quiet. And the homes are absolutely gigantic. That is his home on the right, his former home on the right. Let's go and have a look.
Standing outside Mike Jeffery's former Hamptons mansion with its dark slated roof and tall chimneys, the only property on a dead-end road, I get a powerful sense of how isolated it is. Oh gosh, it is eerily quiet. All I can hear is the sea, just a stone throw away, birds and nothing else.
After we met middleman Jim Jacobson, we wrote to him, asking him to respond to the allegations about his role in this operation. He got back, this time via a lawyer. He denied using coercive, deceptive or forceful behaviour and said he had no knowledge of this kind of conduct by others. He said he doesn't remember making promises of modelling opportunities and any encounter he had was fully consensual.
Hearing from Jim is one thing, but ultimately the evidence I've gathered points to an operation set up to satisfy the sexual fantasies of the Abercrombie guys. And they're the ones I really need answers from. Not just for me, but for men like Barrett, Alex and David. I'm not a lawyer. I don't really have a strong legal background to discern what laws may or may not have been broken. But what I would like to see is some form of accountability.
For such well-known figures, they've been hard to reach. We found landline numbers, cell phone numbers, email addresses, business addresses. We sent letters to two of their houses, including one on an exclusive island. We contacted the family office and a close family member to alert them to the fact that we were trying to get in touch with the couple. We gave them 10 working days to respond, then another 10. The deadlines came and went.
Despite our repeated efforts, Mike Jeffries and Matthew Smith did not respond to our allegations. Nothing. After years of working on this investigation, chasing down leads, corroborating testimony, painstakingly piecing together a paper trail, it all feels pretty frustrating not to get a response.
The men we've spoken to made a decision to break their silence. The Abercrombie guys have chosen to maintain theirs. And as for Abercrombie and Fitch, the company itself, we found no evidence that they were aware of the events the men told us about. But they said they were appalled and disgusted by the behaviour described in the allegations against Michael Jeffries and Matthew Smith.
They added, So much has happened since that phone call with Barrett Paul during lockdown back in 2021 when this all began. Since then, I've had three birthdays. Barrett has fallen in love and got engaged, and so have I.
Before we spoke, Barrett says he hadn't told anyone about his experience with the Abercrombie guys. I wonder what it was that convinced him to take that call. My gut said, trust her, tell her your story, and maybe, just maybe, someone will listen. This experience, I think it broke me, and it mentally messed me up. The language I now have today, I can sit here and tell you that I was taken advantage of.
And I've chosen to speak out because I hope to achieve change, to encourage others to speak out and share their stories. The fact that I'm having this opportunity is something a lot of people will never have. And so while I'm scared and anxious and grateful, I'm also feeling really proud of myself.
That call with Barrett and his willingness to help is what led me to find other men who wanted to speak about their own experiences with the Abercrombie guys, including Alex, who said had he known more about the Morocco trip, he'd have made different choices. I don't know the full details of everything that's going on. I only know from my point of view. I feel it's the demographics that were exploited differently.
Not everyone is a supermodel in living that life. It's affected my life in a hard way going forward just because I still needed to grow and understand some of these things. If I can make a difference for at least one person, then that's worth opening my mouth. There are many reasons why people stay silent. Shame, stigma...
The fear of expensive lawyers, powerful people, and very often, the fear of not being believed. The gay community already knows that this happens. I think shame keeps us in the closet. I don't think that we've experienced our Me Too movement quite yet because I don't think we're quite ready to accept it or believe it.
David says that even though the last decade has been filled with anguish and struggle, he's determined that his experience with the Abercrombie guys won't define the rest of his life. I mean, these events, they directly affected my self-esteem. My life is a lot quieter now. It's full of hope. And I'm fortunate to have a husband that is supportive. And I feel a lot safer than I did a few years ago.
What do you say to Mike Jeffries and Matthew Smith? Was it worth it? Was all of this worth it? Did you get what you needed? Do you remember me? Thanks for listening to the World of Secrets podcast, an investigation from BBC Radio 5 Live and Panorama. If you've enjoyed this episode, then please tell a friend, spread the word, and even better, write a review.
and let us know what you think of the series using the hashtag World of Secrets. You can write to me and the team at Rianna, that's R-I-A-N-N-A, at bbc.com. The Abercrombie Guys is presented and investigated by me, Rianna Croxford. The podcast producers are Ruth Evans, Ailis Hart and Emma Close.
The BBC News investigation editor is Ed Campbell and the podcast editor is Richard Fenton-Smith. Sound designer mix by Andy Fell and Neil Churchill. Voice over by Sid Phoenix.
Production support by Debbie Richford, Sophie Hill, Jackie Johnson and Kirsten Oliver. And technical support by Jonathan Glover and Jack Willis. The World of Secret theme music is by Jeremy Wormsley. This podcast is made in collaboration with BBC Panorama. If you're in the UK, you can watch Panorama and the Abercrombie Guys, The Dark Side of Cool on BBC iPlayer Now or on BBC Select if you're in the US.
The editor is Karen Whiteman, executive producer is Tom Stone and the producer is Kate Brown. The Abercrombie Guys is a BBC News long-form audio production for BBC Sounds. The head of long-form audio is Emma Rippon and the deputy head of BBC Current Affairs is Jim Gray. The commissioning editor at BBC Sounds is Dylan Haskins and commissioning executive is Louise Catton-Horn. The assistant commissioner is Natasha Johansson.
With thanks to Hannah Livingston, Joe Kent, Adam Walker and Paul Myers. And thank you to everyone who spoke to us for this investigation. We can't tell stories like this without you. Thank you for listening.
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