It was January 2021 and I was holed up at home during the pandemic scrolling through social media when I stumbled across a cryptic Instagram post.
A group of male models were reflecting about how they felt abuse against men in the fashion industry was being ignored. “We’ve seen it happen with #MeToo, how about #UsToo?” one wrote.
Curious, I messaged a man who had commented. His name is Barrett Pall, he is a former model and he was writing from more than 5,000 miles away in southern California.
We had been talking for about an hour when he told me he had a secret involving the man behind one of the world’s biggest fashion brands.
As an investigative journalist, I have worked on a lot of stories alleging sexual misconduct, but nothing prepared me for what I was about to hear.
Pall said he was flown from Los Angeles to New York. “They had someone come and shave me, like my whole body, because that’s how they like the boys,” he told me.
“It’s probably like the darkest experience I’ve ever dealt with.”
Pall told me that back in 2011, when he was 22 and pursuing a modeling career in Hollywood, a friend who was an older model had pressured him into being his replacement for an event with men he called “the Abercrombie guys”.
Who were “the Abercrombie guys”? He told me they were Mike Jeffries, then multimillionaire chief executive of the fashion brand Abercrombie & Fitch, and his British partner, Matthew Smith.
Pall said the duo had been throwing opulent sex events at their palatial home in the Hamptons. He told me the one he had attended involved young men, and was facilitated by chaperones in Abercrombie polos and flip-flops, carrying silver platters of alcohol, poppers and lube.
But, Pall claimed, far from being a private affair, these events were a “well-oiled machine” designed to prey on aspiring male models. He said that, as a new man arriving there, he was presented to Jeffries as “the grand prize”. He was so nervous that he threw up, he told me.
Preparing for the event, he said, had involved signing a non-disclosure agreement, being intimately shaved by a personal body groomer, and meeting with a mysterious middleman named “Jim”. The craziest part of all, he said, was that he had a “missing nose covered with a snakeskin patch”.
My journey to investigate these allegations is the subject of a BBC Panorama documentary and a podcast called The Abercrombie Guys.
As part of an investigation that spanned nearly three years, I traveled across America from the suburbs of Ohio to the desert of Palm Springs.
“They had someone come and shave me, like my whole body, because that’s how they like the boys.”
What I unearthed was corroborated accounts and documents of a highly organized international operation involving a network of recruiters and a middleman, and events held for Jeffries, now 79, and Smith, now 60, between 2009-2014, while Jeffries ran the firm, and then also into 2015.
The revelations have since led to the FBI opening a criminal investigation and a civil lawsuit accusing a multinational corporation of funding a decades-long sex-trafficking operation. Abercrombie has appointed an independent law firm to conduct an investigation.
The Phone Call and the Three-Year Investigation
An hour into my first phone call with Pall, the line went quiet. He asked if my jaw had dropped — it had.
Model henchmen in Abercrombie flip-flops? Some kind of linchpin with a snakeskin nose? As I looked down at my notes, I wondered if my editor would believe it.
Pall told me he didn’t know the scale of what had gone on, but he said the experience had broken him and likely other men, too.
After hanging up, he messaged me photos of a diary he had been writing since high school. It covered big sections of his life — including when he first got his job at Abercrombie, aged 17. One entry, written in capitals, read: “F*** YOU Abercrombie & Fitch. F*** YOU … Abercrombie Jim.”
I didn’t know who Jim was, but growing up as a teenager in the noughties, I knew all about Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F). In its heyday, the brand’s black-and-white campaigns featured stars such as Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Lawrence and Taylor Swift.
The dark-shuttered flagship store on London’s Savile Row, with its pungent smell of cologne and booming dance music, was known for only hiring beautiful people.
Male models stood outside topless taking photos with queues of customers, saying, “Hey what’s up?” as you walked in.
The man behind the brand was Jeffries: Between 1992 and 2014, he was one of the most powerful figures in US fashion.
As chief executive, he transformed A&F into a global teen super-brand worth billions, earning millions for himself at the same time.
Jeffries embodied the brand, wearing A&F blue jeans, a polo shirt displaying the A&F moose, and leather flip-flops every day, even in the snowy winter months in Ohio, where the company has its headquarters, former employees said.
His staff wore Abercrombie too, and the interior of his homes, fitted with dark wooden paneling, echoed the stores. “We were trying to be the very coolest, sexiest brand out there. It was his vision, his goal, his passion, his dream, ” Katie Hertert, one of Jeffries’s former assistants at A&F, later told me.
Immediately after the call with Pall, I started looking up the names he had mentioned.
Jeffries had faced several controversies during his 22 years at the top of Abercrombie, mainly around claims of discriminatory hiring practices, but relatively little had been reported about his life.
In the weeks that followed, I scoured newspaper archives, public court records and social media. There was nothing about events such as Barrett had described: no rumors, no gossip, nothing.
So I began sending carefully worded messages and handwritten letters to see if anyone would talk. Often, I was met with dead ends or instantly blocked. But those who responded shared strikingly similar stories.
He said the experience had broken him and likely other men, too.
Later, I searched through my sources’ email accounts and carried out data recovery on their old devices such as iPads, phones and laptops. I managed to retrieve documents that corroborated some of what I was being told — including emails, flight tickets and event itineraries sent by “Jim”, the person they all referred to as the middleman.
The itineraries included the first names of people at each event. It would take me months to figure out who they were.
The Aspiring Models, the NDAs, and the Parties
As I investigated, I was taken aback by the fear and paranoia of many of those I met.
When I initially messaged David Bradberry, a former model now working for the US government, he asked if I was a spy for Jeffries, trying to figure out if people were breaking non-disclosure agreements. He wasn’t the only one to ask.
Bradberry is one of 12 men I have interviewed who say they attended or organized events hosted by Jeffries and his partner between 2009 and 2015.
Event itineraries and flight details showed the pair had hosted events at five-star hotels such as Claridge’s in London and Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in the south of France, as well as at their homes in the Hamptons and Manhattan.
The eight men who said they had attended told me they were recruited by a “casting agent” who they described as having a snakeskin patch on his nose. I identified him through phone and property records as James Jacobson — known to the men as “Jim”.
Of those who said they had attended, half alleged they were initially misled about the nature of the events or not told sex was involved. Others said they understood the events would be sexual, but not exactly what was expected of them.
All the men I spoke to were adults and many were aspiring models in their 20s at the time. Several told me Jacobson or other recruiters who had referred them to him had raised the possibility of modeling opportunities.
They told me that before the events began, they were given NDAs and, to their surprise, appointments had been arranged with a personal groomer to shave them.
At the events, they claimed, Jeffries and Smith would engage in sexual activity with them or “direct” them to have sex with each other.
Some alleged that, feeling overwhelmed and isolated, with Jeffries’s staff present in the room, they didn’t feel able to say “no”. Afterward, they said, men in Abercrombie uniforms handed them envelopes filled with thousands of dollars.
Bradberry, the model, told me he was 23 when he was introduced to Jim, the middleman, back in 2010. He said there was no mention of sex, and he was told stories of celebrities who had launched their careers at Abercrombie.
But Bradberry said the meeting took a sudden turn. “Jim [Jacobson] made it clear to me that unless I let him perform oral sex on me, I would not be meeting with Abercrombie & Fitch or Mike Jeffries,” he said. “It was like he was selling fame, and the price was compliance.”
He said Jacobson subsequently offered him some money, telling him it was “for his time”. “He mentioned he wasn’t supposed to be doing this. And so, I assumed it was … this is hush money.” Looking back, he told me this incident should have been “a red flag”, but he thought the middleman “was just a creepy old dude” he would not see again.
Jacobson later extended an invitation to a daytime event at Jeffries’s now former home in the Hamptons, telling him the Abercrombie boss “could make his career”.
Bradberry said Jacobson did not go into much detail about what the event would be, but told him he would be compensated. He said he was told to buy an outfit with an A&F gift card, which he felt made it seem “legitimate” and “official”.
In the Hamptons, Bradberry said, he spoke to Jeffries and his partner about his aspiration to become an A&F model. Later, he alleges, he was given drugs, and directed to have sex with other men and Jeffries. “Between him and the security guards I didn’t feel safe to say ‘no’ or ‘I don’t feel comfortable with this’,” he said.
Pall, a former model turned life coach, told me he’d felt pressured into attending a different event in the Hamptons in 2011. The offer had come through a friend, an older model who was like a big brother, who had been helping him financially. The friend said he would receive $500 for making the referral.
“[My friend] told me he couldn’t do it anymore and thought I would be the perfect replacement,” Pall recalled. He said that later, when he arrived at the event, he felt under pressure to “perform”. “I had a chaperone sitting and watching me.”
Pall said he understood that he would be paid to attend and that the event would have a sexual nature. However, he told me, he was still shocked by what unfolded.
At one point, he said Jeffries was behind him, groping him. “This experience, I think it broke me,” he said. “Going back with the language I now have [more than a decade on], this was not me consenting.”
“I’ll explain what’s going on in person and you will understand. Don’t want to type it.” It was the latest message on my phone from a man I’m calling Alex.
I’d received a tip that he may hold crucial information about the “Abercrombie guys”.
“Abercrombie & Fitch? I know all about that. That’s some highly organized shit, but you know, I’ve signed an NDA, I could get sued for a million dollars,” he said.
We had agreed to meet the next day in New York, by the lake in Central Park. I sat waiting. Hours passed and there was still no sign of him.
I sent a follow-up message. He finally responded: “I’ll explain what’s going on in person and you will understand.”
As dusk approached, I moved to a nearby restaurant and shared my location with my editor. When Alex finally showed up, close to 9pm, his opening gambit was: “I can’t believe people are starting to snitch after all this time.”
Why’s that? “I just thought I’d be dealing with this forever, that it’d never come up.”
He asked if I was a spy for Jeffries, trying to figure out if people were breaking non-disclosure agreements.
A former worker in an Abercrombie shop, Alex told me he was a struggling model when he’d been recruited as dancer for an event held by Jeffries where Alex expected to have to strip, in Marrakech in 2011. Mr Jacobson had offered him $5,000, he said.
Alex, a straight man then in his 20s, said he was auditioned by Jacobson in New York, who demanded he “finish the job” by performing oral sex.
He said he initially tried to charm his way out of it, but “Jim” didn’t agree.
“I had debt, I wanted to support my family,” Alex told me. “I performed the job, and I was disgusted,” he said.
Alex told me that thinking “the hardest part was out of the way”, he was flown to Morocco a few weeks later. The event was taking place in a sprawling villa at the five-star La Mamounia hotel, and everyone had been required to wear Abercrombie.
At midnight, Alex said, it was his time to perform. But moments into his dance, he claimed, Jeffries tried to kiss him.
“I was trying to pull my head back and he opened his mouth wide open, like a whale, and was trying to, like, eat my face. I was trying to be in it without offending him, but like I was pulling my head back at the same time. I was extremely uncomfortable.”
Jeffries had not only invited friends, he said, but he had also flown in many young men to entertain the group, he added.
There were dozens of people there. Some were dressed in elaborate costumes, others were naked in a gold-tiled swimming pool, he said.
Later, feeling overwhelmed, he said he went to hide in a back room where he fell asleep.
Alex said he woke up with a condom inside him and feared his champagne had been spiked.
“When I put things together, I believe there is a very good possibility I was drugged and raped. I’ll probably never, never know for sure the answer of what happened,” he said.
We have no way of knowing exactly what happened or who may have been responsible — and neither can Alex.
Alex says he didn’t say anything at the time. He had signed an NDA, and in a country where gay sex can lead to prison, who would he have told? He also said he needed the money he was due to be paid, and hadn’t yet been given his return flight ticket.
Jim, the Middleman with the Snakeskin Patch
Given the seriousness of the allegations, we had to be thorough, checking things from every angle. I needed to speak to people who had been inside the operation.
One outstanding question was about the funding: where was the money for all this coming from? To answer that, I needed to find “Jim” — the man everyone said was the middleman.
By combing through event itineraries, I discovered “Jim” had used lots of different emails and numbers. In the end, a reverse search on one led me to figure out his full name: James Thor Jacobson. And there he was … on Facebook.
I found myself looking at a selfie of a man in black sunglasses, posing with two labradors. Yet he did indeed appear to have part of his nose missing — and some kind of yellowish snakeskin bandage across the bridge.
I tracked “Jim”, now aged 71, down to rural Wisconsin. A few days later, my producer and I knocked on his door.
Our conversation went round in circles — I asked a question, Jacobson dodged it — a carousel of no comments. When he learned that we intended to name him, Jacobson sat on his wooden porch, put his head in his hands, and cursed. “Leave my name out and I’ll tell you everything,” he said.
Jacobson repeated this request dozens of times the following day, when he agreed to meet for coffee. Everything was on the record. Eventually, Jacobson told me he was “loyal” to himself, that he just “did his job”, and that he’d had no communication with Jeffries and Smith since 2015.
“Everybody went into everything I know about with their eyes wide open. There was never any coercion,” he said. The allegations against him were “patently false”, he added. But he told us one significant thing: When I asked if all the money for this operation came from Jeffries and Smith, he nodded.
We later wrote to him, asking him to respond to allegations about his role as a middleman in the procurement of young men for sex events hosted by the “Abercrombie guys”.
He denied any suggestion of “coercive, deceptive or forceful behavior” being used, and said he had no knowledge of this kind of conduct by others.
He said he doesn’t remember “making promises of modeling opportunities” and any encounter he had was “fully consensual”.
Contacting Jeffries and Smith was harder: We tried landlines, mobiles, email addresses, business addresses, at least 20 times over more than a month. We sent letters to two of their houses.
We were confident they’d been received, but Jeffries and Smith did not respond to our allegations before publication.
Afterward, we received a statement from Jeffries’s lawyer. It said: “Mike Jeffries is 79 years old and retired. In years past, he has chosen not to comment on media reports, documentaries and stories of any kind as they relate to his personal life — and does not plan on doing so now.”
The investigation made headlines around the world. “Will this spark a #MeToo moment for men?” one said.
In the weeks that followed, a civil lawsuit was filed in New York accusing Abercrombie & Fitch of funding a sex-trafficking operation led by its former chief executive.
The legal complaint, brought by Bradberry and others, also accuses Jeffries and his partner of sex-trafficking, sexual misconduct and rape, alleging it’s likely more than 100 men were abused during his tenure.
Jeffries’s lawyer has since called for the case to be dismissed, saying he “vehemently” denies the claims.
Smith has echoed the call, saying that the lawsuit does not “detail any specific, factual occurrences” of an alleged sexual offense by him.
At the same time, the FBI started investigating, and federal prosecutors have enrolled a grand jury to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to pursue a prosecution.
Abercrombie & Fitch, which at the time of publication told us it was “disgusted and appalled” by the allegations, now says it has launched an independent investigation and suspended a substantial part of Jeffries’s retirement payments, totaling about $1 million a year.
The company says its current leadership team were not aware of the allegations and have since transformed into “the values-driven organization we are today”, adding that it has “zero tolerance for abuse, harassment or discrimination of any kind”.
Within days of publishing the investigation, my inbox was filled with people sharing information, as well as messages from men expressing relief and gratitude that accounts of male-on-male abuse were being heard.
More than two years on from our first conversation, I asked Pall why he decided to speak to me. He started crying and said: “My gut said trust her. Tell her your story. And maybe, just maybe, someone will listen.”
The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool is streaming on BBC iPlayer in the U.K., and on BBC Select in the U.S.
Rianna Croxford is a multi-award-winning investigations correspondent for BBC News & Current Affairs. She is the host of World of Secrets: The Abercrombie Guys
