Chloe Ayling hopes series on her kidnapping warns others ‘not to doubt victims’
Chloe Ayling has said she hopes a new series based on her kidnapping encourages people “not to doubt victims based on the way they react to a traumatic experience”.
The British glamour model was abducted in 2017 after arriving at an address in Milan, Italy, for a modelling job, but was later released.
A forthcoming six-part series, Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story, follows her abduction and time in captivity, as well as the subsequent court case that put her kidnappers in jail.
Speaking ahead of the show’s release this week, she said: “I hope it encourages people not to doubt victims based on the way they react to a traumatic experience, based on the way they dress, their job or what they did to survive.
“I hope it encourages people to look deeper than headlines, not to judge a situation or story based on what you read, not to be so easily influenced by media and to keep an open mind before jumping to conclusions.”
Ayling was held in a farmhouse near Turin while a 300,000 euro (£265,000) ransom was demanded, before being released six days later at the British Consulate in Milan.
Polish national Lukasz Herba and his brother, Michal Herba, were subsequently jailed after an Italian court convicted them of kidnapping Ayling.
However, the model faced headlines claiming she had faked her ordeal, and was accused in court of being involved in a “publicity stunt”.
Ayling hopes the new drama allows the public to view the story from her perspective as she feels many key aspects were not fully revealed at the time, including some details about the court case.
“It’s important for me that people can now see all of those key details based on years of extensive research and not a warped version of the truth,” she added.
Written by Georgia Lester, who worked on Killing Eve, the series is based on research, interviews, the legal proceedings and Ayling’s autobiography Kidnapped – The Untold Story Of My Abduction.
Domina actress Nadia Parkes will portray Ayling in the drama alongside A Spy Among Friends actor Adrian Edmondson and The Capture’s Nigel Lindsay.
The model revealed she has seen the series a couple of times now and feels it does a “really good” job of capturing her experience.
“(It) gives a great insight into what happened, how it happened, how long everything dragged on for and how I was wrongly treated”, she said.
“It even taught me a couple of things I didn’t know from the court transcripts.”
Following her kidnapping, Ayling later appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018.
The series will launch on Wednesday on BBC iPlayer and on BBC Three.
