“The Chloe Ayling Story” – “Kidnapped” series: Absurd perpetrator-victim reversal

In the summer of 2017, 20-year-old British model Chloe Ayling (Nadia Parkes) is kidnapped in Milan. After a week she is released again and is subjected to a huge media hype after her kidnapping. After a short time, Chloe Ayling’s credibility was questioned. There is an allegation that she only faked the kidnapping to give her career a boost. The reasons for this were, on the one hand, contradictory information given to the investigating authorities and, on the other hand, representatives of the tabloid newspaper claimed that Chloe Ayling had appeared too cheerful to the media when she returned to London.

The tabloid press was literally looking for contradictions and a possible scandal. The six-part BBC series “Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story,” which can now be seen on ZDF, attempts to tell what really happened during the week-long kidnapping and how Chloe Ayling got caught in the media crossfire. The drama series is based on court transcripts, interviews and a book published by Chloe Ayling. To this day, her story is repeatedly questioned, especially in Internet posts. The two perpetrators were sentenced to long prison terms after a sensational trial in Italy.

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Chloe Ayling was invited to a fake photo shoot in Milan in July 2017. When she entered the supposed agency, she was overpowered by two masked men, injected with ketamine and taken half-anesthetized to a remote house in Piedmont. There one of the kidnappers named Andi (Julian Świeżewski), who had booked her for a shoot in Paris a few months earlier, tells her that she had been kidnapped by a mafia organization called “Black Death” in order to auction her off online. But for a ransom of 300,000 euros she could buy herself out.

Over time, Andi, whose real name is Lukasz Herba, tries to build a relationship of trust with her. Apparently he wants to save her. But all of this is just the manipulation of a stalker who kidnaps Chloe along with his brother and stages this mafia story in the hope of being able to build a relationship with Chloe Ayling. The 20-year-old, completely frightened kidnap victim pretends to sympathize with the kidnapper. She is told that his organization could also kill members of Chloe’s family if she cooperates with the police authorities, before she is released after a week in front of the English embassy in Milan.

Due to the ongoing investigation, Chloe Ayling is not allowed to leave Italy for several weeks. Between bouts of anxiety and panic attacks, she tries to process her experiences while the police question her again and again. It takes time for her to overcome her fear and cooperate with the authorities. This initial hesitation later became her downfall when dealing with the British media in search of a scandalous story.

The series vividly shows how Chloe Ayling, who is massively insecure due to her trauma, comes under increasing pressure, while the perpetrator, in the course of the court proceedings, accepts the media’s claim that the kidnapping never took place. At the same time, for the young model, who comes from a simple, middle-class background in South London, the media attention is capital that she wants to use.

In addition, her agent pressures her to talk to the press. The tabloid media apparatus both lures them and then judges them for it. This leads to an absurd perpetrator-victim reversal. The young woman ultimately becomes a projection screen for frustrated men on the Internet and a target for pent-up hatred. In this respect, the series impressively tells of structural violence against women, the immense difficulty of defending oneself against it and how ruthlessly the tabloid media helps shape such narratives in search of ratings and in doing so commits violence themselves.

Available in the ZDF media library