When Barrett Pall started modeling during his freshman year at New York University, he imagined the job would come with glamorous perks and big paychecks.
“In reality, that’s not what it is at all,” Pall tells Yahoo Life. “I’ve been very open and honest that on my very first photoshoot, I was sexually assaulted by the photographer.”
Inspired by the #MeToo movement and the strength of other survivors, Pall, now 33, first told his story on YouTube and to the Advocate in 2018. Since then, it’s been his mission to expose sexual predators in the modeling industry and encourage other male models to speak out. “I know that this is not an uncommon situation for most models,” he says.
When Pall looks back on his first photoshoot, he recognizes how his inexperience and financial instability made him a target of his alleged abuser, photographer Rick Day, who was subsequently accused of sexual abuse by other models as well. (Day declined multiple requests from Yahoo for comment. There is no evidence that he has ever publicly remarked on the allegations.)
“I grew up in a difficult situation in terms of my family life. Resources and funds were not plentiful. We were poor. We were evicted from four different homes while I was growing up, and I looked at this as an opportunity to make a bunch of money,” Pall tells Yahoo Life.
Going into the photoshoot, he says, he admired Day’s portfolio, which was filled with male models whose careers Pall aspired to have. Pall says that Day groomed him by gradually touching him more and more intimately. When Day started to make unwanted sexual advances, Pall says, the shock of what was happening made him freeze.
“There is no one specific way that someone is sexually assaulted or abused. I personally was not penetrated in any way, but I was sexually abused, and I say that wholeheartedly, knowing full stop that is what happened to me,” says Pall. “There was no consenting, there was no asking, there was no ‘Are you OK with this?’”
As a queer person, Pall believes that men in the LGBTQ community have a harder time navigating the modeling industry. He cites the unspoken “underlying agreement” among models and their employers, meaning they will do what they have to do in order to book campaigns or work with certain photographers. He believes that some photographers take advantage of this.
“I guess this is something that happens, that I’m just going to not talk about and no one will ever have to know,” Pall recalls. “I got back to my dorm room and just cried and felt really dark and confused. To be honest, it’s something that I still don’t like to go back to because something was taken from me and there are pictures. I feel like you see my innocence being taken from me in those pictures.”
Shame and guilt followed, and Pall pushed down his secret, silencing his pain in hopes that he could still build a career as a model. But agencies and other people in the industry constantly remind models that they can be replaced in an instant, he says, and this mentality, partnered with the powerful connections of the people at the top, encourages a culture in which serial abusers feel empowered.
“They prey on our silence,” says Pall. “I came forward with my #MeToo experience with the photographer Rick Day, and I think it’s important to say his name, because he has been protected for so long by this industry and different agents and managers. He is a serial abuser.”
