Ford model Caron Bernstein recalls feeling flattered when she first arrived in 2003 at the Lower East Side studio of famed photographer Terry Richardson.
She said a mutual friend brokered the introduction with claims that Richardson – a fast-rising star who would go on to shoot everyone from Beyoncé and Lady Gaga to President Obama – was a fan.
Bernstein had graced the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar during her fashion heyday, but she was approaching her mid-30s by then and eager to promote her music career with a cool collaboration.
After initial discussions around a big desk, the lensman known for his soft-porn aesthetic and ultra-bright flash quickly turned dark, she told the Daily News.
He took some photos, positioned her in a chair, took more photos, exposed his penis and forced himself into her mouth, she recalled.
“It was like literally being shot with a stun gun. My brain just went on pause,” Bernstein, 47, said. “I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t performing as a model.”
She can’t remember if the alleged attack took seconds or minutes, she said.
“I was like a deer in the headlights,” she said. “I wasn’t drugged, I wasn’t handcuffed. Thank God that never happened. But in a weird way, that would have made it easier to forgive myself for not fighting him off.”
Richardson vehemently denied any wrongdoing through his lawyer.
“Ms. Bernstein knowingly and willingly posed for these photographs and at all times prior to and during the shoot, any contact she had with Mr. Richardson was consensual,” his lawyer Brad D. Rose told The News.
Richardson, 52, has been dogged for years by allegations he used his power as a top photographer and industry gatekeeper to exploit models. Back in 2003, however, he was still a fashion industry darling with campaigns for Gucci, Sisley, Levis and H&M already under his belt.
A former runway and lingerie model, Bernstein said she was comfortable with nudity and willingly agreed to pose topless for him.
She recalls being told Richardson wanted her to portray a fragrance called “Sex” for an editorial layout in V magazine. Someone handed her a single pair of white panties, and she changed in a bathroom, she said.
“I thought it was going to be a test shoot. There was no hair and makeup,” Bernstein recalled.
She asked if she could at least powder herself, but Richardson objected and began snapping with a simple point-and-shoot camera, she said.
As soon as others in the room exited to an outside deck, Richardson moved in close for the alleged assault, ejaculated on her chest and continued to take more photos, she said.
A rep for V magazine told The News the publication had no knowledge of a 2003 editorial feature assigned to Richardson.
“Caron Bernstein agreed to shoot sexually explicit photographs with Mr. Richardson, which had no connection to an editorial or advertising campaign for a fragrance product,” Rose said.
The News reviewed more than 30 negatives from the shoot and several prints. Images apparently snapped in succession showed Bernstein in different positions with semen on her breasts. Her face was cropped out of those prints.
Rose said the sexually explicit images “clearly evidence the extremely sexual nature of the shoot as well as Ms. Bernstein’s willing participation in the explicit acts depicted.”
A photo of Bernstein’s upper torso was used in an early edition of Richardson’s controversial 2004 coffee-table book TERRYWORLD. It did not show her face.
Bernstein called it “ludicrous” to suggest she willingly agreed to perform oral sex on Richardson.
“I didn’t know this man from Adam. I would never walk in somewhere and agree to a sex act with a stranger. I’ve never done that in my entire life. Never in a million years,” she said.
When Bernstein appeared in the 1997 movie “Business for Pleasure,” her lawyer painstakingly negotiated exactly where she agreed to be touched, she said. Her belly above he hip-bone was okay. So were the outsides of her breasts and much of her spine. Her nipples and inner thighs were off limits, she recalled.
She said after the alleged attack, she grabbed her belongings, sprinted down the staircase crying and ran to a friend’s nearby boutique.
“It was terrible. She told me the whole thing,” the pal, who asked not to be identified, told The News. “She was extremely distraught.”
Ex-boyfriend Marcus Antebi also recalled hearing Bernstein’s account a year later in 2004.
“One day I see Terry Richardson walking down the street, and I was with Caron, and she literally had a near anxiety attack,” Antebi, the founder of Juice Press, a popular chain of juice bars, said. “She explained the story to me and seemed very credible.”
Friend Veronica Reyes said Bernstein started to “hyperventilate” and told the story again when they saw Richardson in SoHo more than a decade ago.
“It wouldn’t have made any sense that she’d be lying,” Reyes said.
Bernstein said it was her former friend Johnny Zander who connected her to the shoot and was there that day. A model now living in Los Angeles, Zander denied even knowing Bernstein when first reached by The News last month.
“I don’t know anything about it. I for sure didn’t arrange it,” he said.
After The News sent Zander a screenshot of a private Instagram exchange he initiated with Bernstein in September – their first communication since the Richardson shoot – his lawyer called to say Zander, 46, did in fact remember her.
“It’s been probably 12-13 years. Where are you in the world these days,” Zander wrote to Bernstein on Sept. 29.
“He acknowledges he knows who that is. They corresponded on Instagram,” lawyer David Erikson said.
He said Zander remained adamant he was not at Richardson’s studio for the shoot.
Bernstein’s allegations of predatory behavior are hardly the first against Richardson.
In 2005, Romanian model Gabriela Johansson sued Richardson for fraud in Los Angeles. She claimed he tricked her into signing a release by positioning it as a sign-in sheet at a topless “test shoot” in 2003. She said he “aggressively” pushed her to get completely nude, causing her to walk out. Johansson said Richardson later used her image in a photo exhibit without consent. The case was dismissed with prejudice three months after filing, indicating it was likely settled.
Model and writer Jamie Peck spoke out in 2010, writing on TheGloss.com that Richardson got naked during a shoot and coerced her into touching his penis.
In 2014, artist Charlotte Waters told Vocativ.com that Richardson invited her to a nude photo shoot in 2009, had her sign a release and then ambushed her with demands she engage in sex acts. She was 19 at the time. He was 43.
“I was not asked prior to the shoot or even during if it was ok for him to expose himself, if it was ok for him to force himself into my mouth, if it was ok for him to kiss me aggressively, if it was ok for him to perform oral sex on every part of my lower half or if it was ok for him to ejaculate in my eye, but all of those things were done,” Waters told The News Wednesday.
“My autonomy shut off the moment it began and kept me robotic until it stopped. I was hospitalized that night for a panic attack that I for a long time blamed on a stomach flu,” she said.
A few days after Waters’ account was first published in 2014, Richardson claimed on Huffington Post he was the victim of “an emotionally-charged witch hunt.”
He didn’t deny stripping naked on shoots or ejaculating on models, but he claimed his subjects always consented of their own “free will.”
Anna Del Gaizo disputed that claim in a piece for Jezebel three months later in June 2014.
She recalled meeting Richardson and his assistant at a downtown event in 2008 and following the pair to a Bowery loft for an impromptu shoot. Del Gaizo said she too agreed to pose topless but was surprised when Richardson “pressed” his penis into her mouth.
“Disgusted and unnerved as I was, I smiled and laughed back,” she wrote. “I was outnumbered, and I thought showing fear or outright shock would lead to something worse.”
Del Gaizo appeared “visibly shaken” when she later returned to the party, a friend who was there told The News.
Now an editor for Playboy magazine, Del Gaizo said she received no response from Richardson after telling her story.
“The silence says it all. It’s true,” she told The News. “What’s he going to say?”
Richardson’s lawyer shared a smiling image of Del Gaizo with The News that appeared to show her wearing the photographer’s signature black glasses with his semen on the lenses – a detail that was not included in her piece for Jezebel.
Del Gaizo said she didn’t recall Richardson ejaculating in her face but that it was possible he did.
New York designer and model Lindsay Jones broke a decade of silence by accusing Richardson of sexual assault in a piece published by HuffPo late Wednesday. She confirmed her story to The News, saying Richardson lured her to his studio in 2007 or 2008 with the promise of discussing a possible shoot over a 10 a.m. weekday coffee.
As soon as he closed the door behind her, he pounced, she told The News.
“He just told me to get on my knees,” she said. “He started doing this thing with my eye, he started jabbing (his penis) in my eye. I remember thinking, ‘This is going to give me a black eye, this really hurts.'”
She said he told her to “swallow like a good girl.”
“At the time, I was young, from Utah, very docile. It really caught me off guard. I was afraid and confused and hoping to get it over with. I left there feeling like human garbage,” she said Thursday. “He thought I was disposable.”
Jones was married to a different photographer at the time and reported the incident to her husband but didn’t know where else to turn without harming her career, she said.
She even worked with Richardson again on a shoot for Diesel.
“I was afraid it would overshadow my career and I would lose work and lose money,” she said. “He had such power around him with everyone wanting to impress him. It was very difficult to speak out. I was a kid.”
Richardson’s lawyers also denied Jones’ account.
Read Richardson’s full statement on Jones’ accusations here
Several brands and magazines cut ties with Richardson over the years, but he still managed to land big jobs, including the August 2017 cover of Vogue China with “Game of Thrones” star Emilia Clarke.
When the recent wave of misconduct allegations against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein helped fuel the #MeToo movement and a greater understanding of systemic sex abuse, designers and publishers again distanced themselves.
“Condé Nast has nothing planned with Terry going forward. Sexual harassment of any kind is unacceptable and should not be tolerated,” a rep for the media group told The News.
Peck said Thursday it was “bittersweet” to see so many women coming forward.
“I’m not happy so many women have had abusive experiences at work, nor am I happy so many women have carried around shame about it for years. But this stuff has been going on forever, it’s just that nobody talked about it,” she told The News.
“It’s easy for most people to dismiss one woman as some crazy person seeking attention. It’s harder to dismiss this many. If the chorus of women speaking out now leads to changes in how workplaces are run and material consequences for abusers, that can only be a good thing. Any shred of self-doubt I had about divulging my story is now gone,” she said.
Bernstein, now married to Wall Street banker Andrew Schupak, said she finally felt comfortable enough to share her story with The News once the national reckoning seemed to finally grasp the feelings of shame and guilt that keep may victims hiding in the shadows.
“People might try to discredit me, but I’ve had more than my fair share of 15 minutes of fame,” she said. “And it’s not monetary. I’m financially more than fine.”
Bernstein said she simply wants to warn others and move on.
“I’m not a martyr and I’m not a saint, but if I could stop this from happening to one other person, I would be proud, and maybe I could get some kind of closure,” she said.
