Latest news with #ChloeAyling
News.com.au
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
No one believed Chloe Ayling's sex slave ordeal. Now she knows why
Chloe Ayling was just 20 was she was drugged, kidnapped, and told she was being sold as a sex slave against her will. Ayling was the first victim of the 'mid-high level contract killer' Å�ukasz Herba, a 30-year-old Polish computer programmer who lived in the UK, described 'a fantasist with narcissistic tendencies' in court. But despite her horror ordeal, which saw the glamour model from London held captive for six days after jetting to Italy for a fake job in Milan, many cast doubt over her shocking story. Some struggled to believe Ayling when she said she was able to convince her kidnapper – who had a bounty on her head of $300,000 – to release her by 'getting him to like me'. Herba did set her free, and even drove her back to Milan, leaving her outside the UK consulate, which only fuelled the vicious rumours further. Further doubt was cast when Ayling fronted a pack of waiting media outside her home, smiling as she read out a short, pre-written statement about her living nightmare. Even when her captor was jailed in Italy for 16 years for the kidnap and extortion, a year after the headline-hitting abduction, suspicions didn't falter. Now, eight years on, Ayling has revealed 'the hate never went away' in a new three-part BBC documentary that explores the wild reason 'no one believed' her gut-wrenching story. 'What is it about me and this story that makes it so hard to believe?' she asks at the opening of each episode in the docu-series. The mum-of-one details how the trauma of not being believed has lingered with her all these years, stating it 'the aftermath definitely affected me more, long-term, than the actual kidnap itself'. '[But] it was my calmness that saved me. 'I want to show a victim doesn't have to fit into a typical box to be believed.' She's since been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a developmental condition that affects how people communicate, interact with others, and behave. In the doco, she explains how her then undiagnosed symptoms were behind some of the reasons many struggled to believe the complex tale of her abduction. 'That's a big relief actually in being diagnosed,' she explains at another point in the documentary, while flicking through childhood pictures. 'I had a lot of difficulties with communication. I'd react in the wrong way. If I was being told off I would smile. I just had the wrong reactions to things.' As a result, Ayling, now 28, has spent years fighting to convince others about what happened. Her ordeal began after she landed in Milan, lured there believing she had booked for a photo shoot involving motorcycle leathers. But after arriving at the studio in July 2017, she was snatched by two men in balaclavas, who proceeded to inject ketamine into her arm before gagging and then bundling her into a holdall bag in the boot of a car. The model was then taken to a remote farmhouse where she was handcuffed to a chest of drawers before her agent was sent an email demanding a $300,000 ransom from someone claiming to be a 'mid-high level contract killer' who worked for an organised crime group that traded in human beings. If the agent didn't pay up, Ayling was set to be auctioned as a sex slave on the dark web. The threatening email even included the so-called advert: 'Chloe: Caucasian; 34DD-25-35.' Three photos of her were attached, showing the young woman in swimwear lying on the floor while looking utterly terrified. During her captivity, Ayling started chatting to her kidnapper, and decided to use his growing 'infatuation' with her to try and escape. 'The more we started talking, the more the bond was kind of forming and once I realised he was starting to like me, I knew I had to use that to my advantage,' she told BBC reporter Victoria Derbyshire in 2018. Herba said in court he fell in love with Ayling before they met and hoped the kidnapping would create a scandal to help her modelling career. The model said within two days of being held captive, she agreed to share a bed with Herba. She recalled her kidnapper asking if they could share a kiss and have a relationship. 'I thought, 'This is my chance to get out',' she told the BBC. 'Once I saw his reaction to what I was saying, that things could happen in the future — he was acting excited and really looking forward to it and always talking about it — it was that response that made me realise I needed to keep doing that. 'I had to do everything I could to make him fall in love with me.' Once she was freed, Herba was arrested, and claimed that Ayling was involved in the kidnapping and that it was a publicity stunt to further her modelling career. Witnesses told authorities they saw Ms Ayling and Herba in a cafe appearing to enjoy their time together. They were also spotted walking hand-in-hand. As a result, Ayling was ridiculed by media and scrutinised by the public who became obsessed with the fact she may have made the whole story up. The new BBC series features exclusive interviews with the anonymous UK detective, from the Regional Organised Crime Unit, who – along with three officers from Milan Police and the judge at her kidnapper's trial – all stand by Ayling's version of events, with the judge describing her testimony as 'extremely precise, specific and detailed'. Herba's sentence of 16 years and nine months was later reduced to just over 11 years on appeal. He was also ordered to pay 60,000 euros
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Chloe Ayling was kidnapped to be sold as a sex slave. No one believed her
Chloe Ayling, a glamour model from Coulsdon, south London, was attending what she had been told was a photo shoot for motorcycle leathers in Milan. Upon arriving at the studio in July 2017, she was grabbed by two men in balaclavas, who injected ketamine into her arm and bundled her, gagged, into a holdall in the boot of a car. She was taken to a remote farmhouse where she was handcuffed to a chest of drawers before her agent was sent an email from someone claiming to be a 'mid-high level contract killer' working for an organised crime group that traded in human beings. He was then sent an ultimatum: hand over $300,000 within five days, or the 20-year-old would be auctioned as a sex slave on the dark web. It even included an advert: 'Chloe: Caucasian; 34DD-25-35.' Attached were three photos of her in swimwear lying on the floor. The detective superintendent appointed to lead the case, who chooses to remain anonymous, said: 'I've seen dead people who looked in a far better condition.' Ayling was a victim, first of the 'mid-high level contract killer' who turned out to be Łukasz Herba, a 30-year-old West Midlands-based Polish computer programmer described in court as 'a fantasist with narcissistic tendencies'. And then, after she was freed following six days in captivity, she became a victim of the Italian justice system, which published her name against her wishes, and the British media, which refused to believe the details of the seemingly harebrained plot. As a result, attention and scepticism soon switched to her strangely detached demeanour about the whole affair. 'What is it about me and this story that makes it so hard to believe?' she asks at the opening of each episode of a new three-part BBC documentary, Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping. The series follows umpteen tabloid stories about the model, appearances on a parade of ITV daytime sofas and a 2024 BBC dramatisation of the tale, Kidnapped. Ayling's difficulty in expressing emotion was one of the key reasons the press and public refused to take her story at face value. 'Too happy, too composed, too relaxed,' summed up broadcaster Eamonn Holmes at the time. But in the documentary, she breaks down in tears as she recalls the harrowing details of her abduction. The man she knew as 'MD' served her a plate of rice cakes while telling her he was an assassin whose favoured method of murder was poisoning: 'No one investigates a heart attack,' he said. He explained that he worked for an organisation called Black Death and that even if he wanted to release her, there were powerful figures above him who would not allow it. Ayling's natural stoicism gave her an extraordinary presence of mind during her ordeal. She calmly spurned Herba's sexual advances, saying she was 'not feeling it' while chained to furniture, but he 'lit up' at discussion of what she might agree to once free. She reveals she 'started talking to him about the future, to lead him on, and make him want to fight to release me'. What Ayling was unaware of was that Black Death was not a far-reaching criminal enterprise, but an invention by Herba, and that he had enlisted the assistance of his brother, Michal, in snatching her from the studio. When Ayling's contacts failed to stump up the $300,000, Herba agreed to release her on condition she said nothing to the police and paid $50,000 within the month. He drove her to the British consulate, posing as a friend she had called upon her release. Neither of them knew that the officials there had been alerted to her abduction, and Herba was promptly arrested. Ayling's evidence helped convict him of kidnapping and extortion, with a prison sentence reduced on appeal to just over 11 years. If that were not vindication enough of Ayling's account, the BBC series features exclusive interviews with the anonymous UK detective, from the Regional Organised Crime Unit, along with three officers from Milan Police and the judge at her kidnapper's trial: all stand by Ayling's version of events, the judge describing her testimony as 'extremely precise, specific and detailed'. Yet, eight years on, suspicion and hostility still stalk Ayling, who says: 'The hate never went away'. It has ranged from a belligerent Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain to trolls on social media who have continued to post damning remarks such as 'a lying mastermind, dumb but gorgeous'. 'The aftermath definitely affected me more, long-term, than the actual kidnap itself,' she tells the documentary makers. She was forced to stay in Italy for three weeks after her release and taken back to the site of her captivity by police keen to elicit a shaken response from a woman they were yet to believe. After being cleared to return home, a frenzy of photographers camped outside her mother's house. Persuaded that the only way to get rid of them was to go outside and talk, she stood smiling and delivered a short statement, while dressed in revealing clothing. In the documentary, Page 3 photographer Jeany Savage – who had shot Ayling's Daily Star debut as a 'Surrey sweetie' and 'frilly thriller'– speaks for her detractors: 'She appears in a little white top with her t--s hanging out. I mean, come on!' Ayling, who describes herself online as a 'multiple property owner', is shown relaxing in her rural idyll in Snowdonia. But her mother 'struggles with what's happened', the model says in a voice-over, and 'won't be doing an interview in this film'. Ayling's son, a toddler during the kidnapping, is not even mentioned, nor is her 2018 stint in the Celebrity Big Brother house, or her sideline on adult content subscription website OnlyFans. Nonetheless, Ayling appears to have learnt from her media journey. Unlike her appearances on This Morning or Victoria Derbyshire, in which she was seen in skimpy outfits and with voluminous blow-dried locks, she is interviewed here wearing a mint-green blazer and her hair in a demure bun. She has also learnt something more profound about herself. In the final episode, she is filmed receiving a psychiatric report diagnosing Autism Spectrum Disorder. 'There are difficulties in social interaction, communication and repetition,' it reads. The diagnosis not only explains her 'lack of expression, no matter how hard I try', but also experiences that date back to childhood: 'My mum would come on school trips,' she recalls, 'because she was worried that I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted.' The case judge, Ilio Mannucci Pacini, says in the programme: 'Interpreting the calm demeanour she showed as a sign of the absence of trauma is, I believe, a mistaken mechanism.' Or, as Ayling puts it more succinctly: 'Not everyone has to fit in the same box.' Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping is available on BBC iPlayer
Daily Mirror
6 days ago
- Daily Mirror
Brit model Chloe Ayling says autism explains 'odd' behaviour after kidnapping
After Chloe Ayling was drugged and kidnapped at a photoshoot in 2017, she was accused of staging the whole thing - but a new BBC doc challenges these claims, revealing Chloe's undiagnosed autism After British glamour model Chloe Ayling was drugged and kidnapped at a photoshoot in 2017, she was accused of staging the whole thing. The outlandish events she described, coupled with her unemotional retelling of the story in media interviews, led many to believe it was all a publicity stunt. But a new BBC documentary challenges these claims, revealing that Chloe's behaviour during and after the kidnap was the result of her undiagnosed autism. In the documentary, she says: 'For ages I just said I'm not an emotional person, but now I realise that, no matter how hard I try, I just can't [express emotion]. It's a big relief actually in being diagnosed, knowing I don't have to keep trying to change something – that's just not going to happen because there's a reason for it.' It comes after a woman searches her husband's name online and awful discovery leads to his arrest. 'My husband seemed confused on Christmas holiday - then he died in front of me' Chloe was 20 when Polish national Lukasz Herba abducted her after luring her to a fake fashion shoot in Milan, Italy. She was grabbed from behind, injected with ketamine, bundled into a suitcase and driven to a remote farm building, where she was held captive for six days. Herba sent disturbing pictures to Chloe's manager of her lying unconscious in skimpy clothing along with a €300,000 (£260,000) ransom demand, threatening to auction her off as a sex slave or feed her to tigers if he failed to pay. Chloe was eventually released and Herba was sentenced to 16 years and nine months after being convicted of her kidnapping. But many refused to believe the story of Chloe's terrifying ordeal. Doubts began circulating when she emerged from her mum's house in Coulsdon, South London, to deliver a statement, saying: 'I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour.' Many felt her robotic delivery, slight smile and her outfit of vest top and shorts were at odds with the seriousness of the situation. Others looked for inconsistencies in her story, questioning why she had gone shopping with her kidnapper to buy shoes, not taking the opportunity to escape. A stint on Celebrity Big Brother the following year let to accusations she was a money-grabber who wanted only to be famous. Recalling the criticism, she says: 'The aftermath affected me more than the kidnap.' In the documentary, Chloe, now 28, gets a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, which she says explains a lot about her life growing up. She says: 'I had a lot of difficulties with communication. I'd react in the wrong way. If I was being told off, I would smile. I just had the wrong reactions to things. My mum would come with me on school trips because I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted or express how I was feeling.' Chloe's diagnosis with ASD, a developmental condition affecting communication, makes complete sense to her former manager, Phil Green. He tells the documentary: 'She wasn't a typical model-about-town – she didn't seem to have many friends, or hang about with other models. She lived at home with her mum. Her reaction to everything that happened was so unemotional.' Phil, who met Chloe when she was 19, lashes out at Italian prosecutors for putting her story in the public domain against her wishes, forcing her to stay in Italy for weeks after her release and taking her back to the farm where she was held captive. He says: 'If that had happened to an Italian girl in Britain, she would have been allowed to go home immediately to be with her family. My feeling then was that they didn't believe her and wanted to see her reaction.' Bizarrely, Chloe was only found because her kidnapper, Lukasz Herba, walked her into the British consulate in Milan. Herba, from the West Midlands, was later described in court as a 'narcissistic fantasist' who had become obsessed with Chloe after becoming friends on Facebook. With the help of his brother Michal, also jailed for his part in the kidnap, Herba concocted an elaborate plan, posing as a photographer called Andre Lazio to book her for the modelling job in Milan. He was sentenced to 16 years and nine months in prison, later reduced to just over 11 years on appeal. Chloe is now desperately trying to rebuild her life and has recently purchased a property in North Wales, attracted by the peace and quiet and the fact that no one knows who she is there. And while the autism diagnosis has helped her understand the backlash against her, she is keen to stress it does not excuse the doubters. She says: 'Autism plays a big part in the way I reacted, and that was confusing to neurotypical people. However, there are other reasons why people could react in the way that I did, or in an 'unusual' way that doesn't fit the normal box. 'People disassociate with events that have happened or have a delayed reaction, especially after trauma. So, it can't all be put down to a diagnosis. And that shouldn't affect the way people treated me.' Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping is available on BBC iPlayer
Telegraph
6 days ago
- Telegraph
Chloe Ayling was kidnapped to be sold as a sex slave. Then her trauma really began
Chloe Ayling, a glamour model from Coulsdon, south London, was attending what she had been told was a photo shoot for motorcycle leathers in Milan. Upon arriving at the studio in July 2017, she was grabbed by two men in balaclavas, who injected ketamine into her arm and bundled her, gagged, into a holdall in the boot of a car. She was taken to a remote farmhouse where she was handcuffed to a chest of drawers before her agent was sent an email from someone claiming to be a 'mid-high level contract killer' working for an organised crime group that traded in human beings. He was then sent an ultimatum: hand over $300,000 within five days, or the 20-year-old would be auctioned as a sex slave on the dark web. It even included an advert: 'Chloe: Caucasian; 34DD-25-35.' Attached were three photos of her in swimwear lying on the floor. The detective superintendent appointed to lead the case, who chooses to remain anonymous, said: 'I've seen dead people who looked in a far better condition.' Ayling was a victim, first of the 'mid-high level contract killer' who turned out to be Łukasz Herba, a 30-year-old West Midlands-based Polish computer programmer described in court as 'a fantasist with narcissistic tendencies'. And then, after she was freed following six days in captivity, she became a victim of the Italian justice system, which published her name against her wishes, and the British media, which refused to believe the details of the seemingly harebrained plot. As a result, attention and scepticism soon switched to her strangely detached demeanour about the whole affair. 'What is it about me and this story that makes it so hard to believe?' she asks at the opening of each episode of a new three-part BBC documentary, Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping. The series follows umpteen tabloid stories about the model, appearances on a parade of ITV daytime sofas and a 2024 BBC dramatisation of the tale, Kidnapped. Ayling's difficulty in expressing emotion was one of the key reasons the press and public refused to take her story at face value. 'Too happy, too composed, too relaxed,' summed up broadcaster Eamonn Holmes at the time. But in the documentary, she breaks down in tears as she recalls the harrowing details of her abduction. The man she knew as 'MD' served her a plate of rice cakes while telling her he was an assassin whose favoured method of murder was poisoning: 'No one investigates a heart attack,' he said. He explained that he worked for an organisation called Black Death and that even if he wanted to release her, there were powerful figures above him who would not allow it. Ayling's natural stoicism gave her an extraordinary presence of mind during her ordeal. She calmly spurned Herba's sexual advances, saying she was 'not feeling it' while chained to furniture, but he 'lit up' at discussion of what she might agree to once free. She reveals she 'started talking to him about the future, to lead him on, and make him want to fight to release me'. What Ayling was unaware of was that Black Death was not a far-reaching criminal enterprise, but an invention by Herba, and that he had enlisted the assistance of his brother, Michal, in snatching her from the studio. When Ayling's contacts failed to stump up the $300,000, Herba agreed to release her on condition she said nothing to the police and paid $50,000 within the month. He drove her to the British consulate, posing as a friend she had called upon her release. Neither of them knew that the officials there had been alerted to her abduction, and Herba was promptly arrested. Ayling's evidence helped convict him of kidnapping and extortion, with a prison sentence reduced on appeal to just over 11 years. If that were not vindication enough of Ayling's account, the BBC series features exclusive interviews with the anonymous UK detective, from the Regional Organised Crime Unit, along with three officers from Milan Police and the judge at her kidnapper's trial: all stand by Ayling's version of events, the judge describing her testimony as 'extremely precise, specific and detailed'. Yet, eight years on, suspicion and hostility still stalk Ayling, who says: 'The hate never went away'. It has ranged from a belligerent Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain to trolls on social media who have continued to post damning remarks such as 'a lying mastermind, dumb but gorgeous'. 'The aftermath definitely affected me more, long-term, than the actual kidnap itself,' she tells the documentary makers. She was forced to stay in Italy for three weeks after her release and taken back to the site of her captivity by police keen to elicit a shaken response from a woman they were yet to believe. After being cleared to return home, a frenzy of photographers camped outside her mother's house. Persuaded that the only way to get rid of them was to go outside and talk, she stood smiling and delivered a short statement, while dressed in revealing clothing. In the documentary, Page 3 photographer Jeany Savage – who had shot Ayling's Daily Star debut as a 'Surrey sweetie' and 'frilly thriller'– speaks for her detractors: 'She appears in a little white top with her t--s hanging out. I mean, come on!' Ayling, who describes herself online as a 'multiple property owner', is shown relaxing in her rural idyll in Snowdonia. But her mother 'struggles with what's happened', the model says in a voice-over, and 'won't be doing an interview in this film'. Ayling's son, a toddler during the kidnapping, is not even mentioned, nor is her 2018 stint in the Celebrity Big Brother house, or her sideline on adult content subscription website OnlyFans. Nonetheless, Ayling appears to have learnt from her media journey. Unlike her appearances on This Morning or Victoria Derbyshire, in which she was seen in skimpy outfits and with voluminous blow-dried locks, she is interviewed here wearing a mint-green blazer and her hair in a demure bun. She has also learnt something more profound about herself. In the final episode, she is filmed receiving a psychiatric report diagnosing Autism Spectrum Disorder. 'There are difficulties in social interaction, communication and repetition,' it reads. The diagnosis not only explains her 'lack of expression, no matter how hard I try', but also experiences that date back to childhood: 'My mum would come on school trips,' she recalls, 'because she was worried that I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted.' The case judge, Ilio Mannucci Pacini, says in the programme: 'Interpreting the calm demeanour she showed as a sign of the absence of trauma is, I believe, a mistaken mechanism.' Or, as Ayling puts it more succinctly: 'Not everyone has to fit in the same box.'
Cosmopolitan
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Cosmopolitan
Kidnapped model Chloe Ayling says newly diagnosed health condition could explain why nobody believed her story
Chloe Ayling has divulged more information as to why her astonishing kidnapping story was not initially believed. The 28-year-old made headlines back in 2017 when she attended a staged photoshoot in Milan, only to be injected with ketamine, stuffed into a suitcase and have her kidnapper demand a substantial ransom. Ayling's manager received a series of photos of the model, then just 20, scantily clad and unconscious, with demands that €300,000 (the equivalent of around £260,000) was paid to ensure her safety. If demands were not met, Ayling was to be sold off into sex slavery. While Ayling was freed after six days, the model, who has now spoken out in a new BBC documentary, admits it has not been easy rebuilding her life following the ordeal. In Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping, Ayling explains that she is still plagued by the fact people don't believe her story. However, she adds that a recent autism diagnosis may have helped explain why many – including law enforcers – initially approached Ayling's story with a dose of skepticism. Reflecting on her childhood, Ayling says in the documentary: 'I had a lot of difficulties with communicating 'I'd react in the wrong way. If I was being told off I would smile. I just had the wrong reactions to things. 'My mum would come with me on school trips because I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted or express how I was feeling. For ages I just said I'm not an emotional person, but now I realise that no matter now hard I try, I just can't [express emotions].' When Ayling initially returned home following the ordeal, she spoke out about the horror she experienced – but her flat, emotionless delivery saw people question the authenticity of events. Others pointed towards the fact Ayling went shopping with her kidnapper, and speculated whether the kidnapping was an elaborate publicity stunt, or even whether Ayling had been in on the abduction all along. However, these theories are entirely unfounded; Lukasz Herba, who claimed to be a trained assassin and part of the 'Black Death' gang was found guilty of kidnapping and initially sentenced to 16 years and nine months in prison – reduced to 11 years following an appeal. Ayling, who received a diagnosis confirming she was on the autism spectrum disorder during the three-part documentary, does not hold a grudge against those who did not believe her. 'I can't really be mad at people for not understanding, when I didn't really understand it myself,' she says. Since the ordeal, Ayling took part in 2018's Celebrity Big Brother, where she placed 11th. She now shares son Ashton, with her former partner Conor Keyes, and shares content on social media and on her OnlyFans page. Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping is available to view on BBC iPlayer Kimberley Bond is a Multiplatform Writer for Harper's Bazaar, focusing on the arts, culture, careers and lifestyle. She previously worked as a Features Writer for Cosmopolitan UK, and has bylines at The Telegraph, The Independent and British Vogue among countless others.
