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Louise Thomas
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Think back on the Chloe Ayling story in 2017. You know, the “model who faked her own kidnapping”. You might remember how people fixated on her going “shoe shopping” with her abductor. On how she “smiled too much” when she got home. On her wearing outfits that were “too revealing”. What we don’t remember is that she was injected with ketamine, held hostage in a remote house, and told she was going to be sold as a sex slave. What slips our mind is the fact that the man who kidnapped her was found guilty of abduction and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
It’s this gap in our collective memory that the BBC’s new drama about the case is hoping to close. Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story is a forensic study of Ayling’s abduction in July 2017. The six-part drama, in which Ayling is played by actor Nadia Parkes, tells of how the then-20-year-old model was booked for a photo shoot in Milan only to be drugged, gagged, handcuffed and stuffed in the boot of a car when she arrived at the studio. Ayling spent six days in captivity in the Italian countryside. Her abductor, Lukasz Herba, told her that a mafia-esque crime group called Black Death – later revealed to be a figment of his imagination – was going to sell her on the dark web. They took one trip into a nearby town to buy supplies, during which he told her she was being watched by a gang. Eventually, he decided to release her, on the condition she paid her own ransom and agreed to be his girlfriend back in the UK. He dropped her off at the British consulate in Milan. After intense police questioning in Italy – they were suspicious about the trip to the shops – Ayling was allowed to come home.
But on her return, Ayling found that her ordeal hadn’t yet come to an end; in fact, it had only just begun. The British press hounded and vilified her for not looking traumatised enough and sneered at the peculiarities of the story. A narrative took hold across the nation that the whole thing had been a publicity stunt of Ayling’s design, partly because she had been photographed holding hands with Herba when they went to the shops. What the series shows is how, in reality, she was trembling with fear as they walked the streets hand-in-hand, weighing up whether to make a break for it. Kidnapped shows in excruciating detail how Ayling was forced to feign affection for Herba out of fear that he would kill her.
Screenwriter Georgia Lester says that reading Ayling’s 2018 book Kidnapped, she was astonished by the “intricacies of what she actually went through, compared to how it was written about in the press”. Then, as she dug deeper and read the police transcripts, she found the story “more and more infuriating”. “Oh, my God, we’ve got to get this on screen,” she recalls thinking.
Even Ayling herself was amazed to see some of the details brought to light in the series. In episode six, we see Herba’s 2018 trial play out – Ayling wasn’t there, and she had never read the transcripts shows how Herba had jumped on the publicity stunt narrative that was gaining traction back in the UK and used it in his own defence. Ayling was in on the whole plan, he claimed. His story was quickly debunked, not least because of his own inability to tell it, getting routinely tangled up in his own lies. Eventually, he was sentenced to 16 years for kidnapping and extortion. His brother Michal, who acted as his accomplice, was tried and given a similar sentence the following year.
The worst of the media’s treatment of Ayling can be summed up in one brutal Piers Morgan interrogation that aired on Good Morning Britain in October, less than three months after Ayling escaped. The interview is reenacted verbatim in the series. “If you’re going to conduct media interviews where you’re being paid money, and you’re doing a book for thousands of pounds before there’s even been a trial, I think we’re perfectly entitled to ask you difficult questions,” Morgan barks. The interview essentially served as a green light for trolls to unleash vitriol on Ayling, and she received messages calling her a liar and telling her to kill herself.
Only years later has it become shockingly clear that Ayling was in a lose-lose situation: if she didn’t speak about the trauma, no one would believe her; if she did, still, no one would believe her. “Ironically, there’s this vicious cycle,” Lester says. “The more that Chloe does press and the more she tells people what happened to her, the more people doubt her because they think that she is seeking fame and fortune.”
Though no one seemed to call it out at the time, looking back now, the misogyny behind Ayling’s treatment is glaring – because she was a glamour model, there were claims that she was “asking for it”. “We’re so quick to judge women and girls in our society,” says Lester. “I’ve worked in reality TV, so I know how quick the press are to pull women down, as well as hold them up, depending on what sells papers.”
And there were strong elements of classism, too, with Ayling being judged for making money off her trauma by partaking in interviews. “Why shouldn’t she earn money?” asks Lester. “This is a young woman with financial responsibilities whose only way of income and earning money had been taken away from her, because she had experienced the most horrific ordeal.” Lester points out that, when Ayling returned to the UK, she had bills to pay and was being offered money “beyond her wildest dreams” to have an interview with The Daily Mail or go on Dr Phil. “And there were enough other people – tabloids and friends of hers – earning money off her,” she says. “Why shouldn’t she also be paid for what she had been through?”
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In this respect, Lester sees depressing parallels between the treatment of Ayling and that of Jay Slater’s family, who were mocked for being working class and accused of using a GoFundMe appeal to “line their pockets” after the British teenager went missing in Tenerife. “I did not engage at all with the gossip surrounding Jay Slater, because of my experience working on Kidnapped,” she says.
Who knows how a victim of trauma should react, until you’ve actually been through it?
There were similarities, too, with the Amanda Knox case from 2007. Knox spent almost four years in jail in Italy after her wrongful conviction in the murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student, with whom she shared an apartment in Perugia. At the time, Italian prosecutors leaked stories about “foxy Knoxy” doing “cartwheels” in custody and pictures of her smiling were plastered everywhere. Like Knox, Ayling found her every move dissected and used against her: too smiley, too nonchalant, too composed. The British press and public demanded to see a woman crying and dishevelled. Instead, they saw someone who was unflappable in interviews, who beamed as she told cameras, “I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour,” and who looked impeccable in every press appearance.
“Who knows how a victim of trauma should react, until you’ve actually been through it?” says Lester, adding that what we saw in the press at the time wasn’t the full story. She notes how the British media, in fact, did not see Ayling in the immediate aftermath given that she was interviewed in Italy for weeks after the kidnapping. “We do have transcripts saying that she cried and had a panic attack during her police interview,” says Lester. “There were three weeks where she locked herself in her hotel room in Italy, terrified that she was going to be taken again and existing in a state of absolute fear and paranoia. Then she came back to the UK only to find herself being hounded by the press and paparazzi.”
What we should be focused on, says Lester, is the way we treat victims – as opposed to the way they behave. “This is a traumatised young woman who was kidnapped, and when she goes out for a dog walk, she’s got random men jumping out at her, taking photos,” she says.
Lester wants viewers to come away from the series believing Chloe Ayling. “And I want people to think before they engage in speculation, read beyond the headlines, and consider things more before they go down the pub and laugh about someone’s misfortunes,” she says. Lester also urges people to not judge someone because they aren’t crying. As Ayling herself said this week, “I was happy to be home. I was happy this was over, so why shouldn’t I be smiling?”
All episodes of ‘Kidnapped‘ are on BBC iPlayer now, with episodes airing on BBC Three from 9pm on 14 August
