Throughout his career, Sullivan has boasted of his prolific sex life. He once claimed to have slept with nearly 1,000 women in a year and has also admitted hiring sex workers.
Beneath his public persona, there have long been hints at more sinister, predatory behaviour. In the 1990s, Sullivan was given the nickname “No job/blow job” – a reference to his reputation for asking models to carry out oral sex on him in return for featuring in his publications.
The Guardian newspaper once quoted him as saying: “I’ve always said what’s the point in owning a sweet shop if you can’t eat a few sweets.”
Some of his associates defend him. Nick Cracknell, a friend and former business partner, said it was “a very much accepted and well-known fact that David slept with a lot of women and he was very open about that”.
But our investigation has found that some of those working in the glamour modelling industry had concerns about Sullivan.
One modelling agent told reporters he would warn young models about Sullivan, while another said his company stopped sending the tycoon models because of his reputation for “casting couch” behaviour.
A third agent, however, took a different approach, according to the account of a woman we are calling Rebecca. The female agent had approached Rebecca on the street and promised a glittering glamour model career earning £1,000 a week in London.
But, after arriving in the city, Rebecca said the agent told her she had to do sex work. She said the agent also told her that, to be a model and appear in the Sport newspapers, she would need to have sex for money with Sullivan, someone the agent described as a “very good friend”.
“She said to me, just go in there and just do what he says,” Rebecca said.
During their meeting in 1998, Sullivan told Rebecca, “don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” before having anal sex with her, she said. He then told her he would “sort it out for you to go in the paper, don’t worry about that”, she recalled.