‘I Was Laying In Bed With A Fake Smile On…’ Men Of Former Abercrombie Boss Mike Jeffries Claim About Sexual Harassment

Mike Jeffries, former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, has been accused by multiple men of sexual exploitation, including assault and drugging at modeling events.

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According to BBC report, some of the men claim they were abused, while others claim they were drugged. Luke describes his surprise when he was led to Jeffries’ luxury hotel suite in Spain in 2011.

“It looked like an Abercrombie store movie set,” he said, noting that he initially thought the event was intended as a photo shoot.

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He said the room was dimly lit with erotic photographs of men’s abs adorning the dark walls. “In the middle stood a group of assistants dressed in Abercrombie & Fitch uniforms – polo shirts, jeans and flip-flops – casually folding clothes on a table, pretending to be store clerks,” he added.

Luke says that at age 20, he was invited to appear in an advertisement for the company when he traveled from his home in Los Angeles to Madrid to meet the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F).

He said the offer came through a modeling website from someone claiming to be a talent scout and executive assistant for Jeffries, who at the time was the head of the well-known teen-retail chain, BBC reported.

In the suite, Luke describes how Jeffries’ assistants began role-playing, encouraging him to act as a greeter without a shirt on.

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The BBC reported that Jeffries and his life partner, Matthew Smith, came out of the corner of the room at that point. They immediately started touching him and Jeffries kissed him forcefully, he said. “I tried to avoid the whole situation as much as possible, but Michael was very aggressive.”

“I tried to say no repeatedly. And then I just got convinced to do something. But I kept saying no, and I wanted to go.”

Luke (a pseudonym) is one of eight other men who have come forward to the BBC in the past year since we first reported allegations of sexual exploitation at events organised by Jeffries and Smith.

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Following the BBC report, the FBI launched an investigation, and now 20 men have come forward to say they attended or helped organize these events. In addition to Luke’s account, the new testimony provides more insight into the scale of these events, which took place from at least 2009 to 2015 during Jeffries’ tenure as CEO.

According to the BBC, Keith Milkie attended several events hosted by Jeffries and Smith between 2012 and 2014.

Milkie identified as straight at the time and found some of these events “awkward” and “painful.” On one occasion in Paris, he claimed that Jeffries had ordered him to have sex with another man, which he neither wanted nor enjoyed.

On another occasion, while aboard the Queen Mary 2, a transatlantic ocean liner, he was verbally abused by Jeffries, who was drunk, after he refused to perform a risky sex act and attempted to insert a “bleeding finger” into him.

“I was lying in bed with a fake smile, crying inside,” he says. “Here I am in the middle of the ocean and I have a person four times my age in this position of power and influence, humiliating me to death and literally calling me worthless… just because I said no to something.” BBC he quoted him.