Who is Chloe Ayling? BBC drama reveals the truth about the glamour model’s kidnapping

By Fatou Ferraro Mboup

Published Aug 14, 2024 at 01:02 PM

Reading time: 3 minutes

Email Facebook WhatsApp X Flipboard

Copy Link

Image by chloeayling97 from IG

I still recall the exact afternoon in 2017, when I came home from college, collapsed onto the sofa, turned on the TV and saw that every news channel was focused on one story: Chloe Ayling. I kept watching and soon became obsessed with the harrowing tale of a 20-year-old glamour model who, according to the tabloids, had staged her own kidnapping.

For anyone who doesn’t remember the story, let me explain. Seven years ago, Ayling, a successful model, travelled to Milan, Italy to attend what she believed to be a photoshoot. When she arrived at the location, Ayling was blindfolded, drugged, gagged, handcuffed, and stuffed into the boot of a car. The young woman was then taken to an unknown location held captive and told that she would be soon sold off as a sex slave. It must have been a truly terrifying ordeal, but when Ayling finally made it back to the UK, she was painted not as a survivor, but as a liar.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by CHLOE AYLING (@chloeayling97)

The public, myself included, couldn’t look away from the unfolding narrative. We all fixated on details that were fed to us by the media, from her supposed shoe-shopping trip with her abductor, the way she seemed to smile too much when she returned home, and how her outfits were deemed “too revealing” for someone who had just survived a harrowing experience.

What slipped through the cracks of our collective memory was the brutal reality: Ayling was injected with ketamine, held captive in a remote farmhouse, and repeatedly threatened that she would be sold as a sex slave by a mafia-esque crime group called “Black Death.” The crime group in question turned out to simply be a figment of her accuser’s imagination. The man who had abducted her, Lukasz Herba, was later found guilty of kidnapping and sentenced to 16 years in prison—a crucial detail that many of us have conveniently forgotten.

Once Ayling returned to the UK, the model faced a wave of accusations, with many claiming that she had fabricated the entire story for publicity.

Now, seven years later, on Wednesday 14 August, the BBC has launched a new drama series, Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story, which seeks to tackle these misconceptions head-on.

This six-part series is not just a retelling but a forensic dissection of the events that transpired in July 2017. Nadia Parkes, who takes on the role of Ayling, brings to life the terrifying journey of a young model lured to Milan under the guise of a photo shoot.

For six days, Ayling was held captive in the desolate Italian countryside, manipulated by Herba, who concocted a story about the shadowy crime syndicate, the Black Death, planning to auction her on the dark web. They made a single trip into town, a surreal excursion during which Herba warned her his supposed gang was watching her. Ultimately, the perpetrator released her, on the bizarre condition that she paid her own ransom and agreed to be his girlfriend in the UK. Ultimately leaving Ayling at the British consulate in Milan where the 20-year-old finally found safety.

The series also highlights a particularly harsh interview with Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain, which aired in October 2017, less than three months after Ayling’s escape. This conversation was recreated word-for-word in the series, showing Morgan bluntly stating: “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.” The interview effectively opened the floodgates for trolls to target Ayling, bombarding her with messages accusing her of lying and urging her to end her life.

As reported by The Independent, screenwriter Georgia Lester was captivated by the story after reading Ayling’s 2018 book Kidnapped. As she explored the police transcripts, the writer became increasingly aware of the vast gap between what Ayling actually went through and the skewed narrative presented to the public: “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. “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,” Lester continued.

Even Ayling herself, after watching the series, was shocked by the details that surfaced, details she hadn’t fully grasped until seeing them dramatised. Episode six, which depicts Herba’s 2018 trial, unearths the extent to which he tried to weaponise the media’s scepticism in his defence. The criminal claimed Ayling was complicit, a willing participant in her own abduction. But these lies quickly unravelled in court, exposing a much more twisted reality. Herba was sentenced to 16 years in prison, a fate shared by his brother Michal, who also played a role in the kidnapping.