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In 2017, 20-year-old model Chloe Ayling was abducted during a fake photoshoot in Italy. After Ayling appeared at the Milan consulate days later, suspicion fell on her as police and the public suspected the entire thing may have been staged as a publicity stunt.
Now, the shocking story of Ayling's kidnapping has been transformed into a six-part BBC miniseries. “This factual drama follows her terrifying kidnap, her bravery and resilience in captivity, and the subsequent court case that put her kidnappers in jail,” reads the BBC description. “Yet despite their convictions, Chloe faced headlines accusing her of faking her own kidnapping, and found herself at the centre of a media storm.”
So who is Chloe Ayling and what really happened back in 2017?
Who is Chloe Ayling?
Chloe Ayling was just 20 when she was kidnapped during a modelling job in Italy. Originally from Croydon in southeast London, Ayling began working as a model when she was 18.
“I was at college for three years, studying law, business and psychology, and I had a baby when I was in college,” Ayling said in 2018 while on Celebrity Big Brother.
What happened in 2017 when Chloe Ayling was kidnapped?
In July 2017, Ayling was hired to do a photoshoot in Milan by Lukasz Herba. Herba drugged Ayling and transported her to a farmhouse in the country near Turin in a holdall bag in the trunk of his car. Herba threatened to sell Ayling as a sex worker online unless a $300,000 ransom was paid.
Herba brainwashed Ayling, spinning a complicated tale — he claimed he was part of an organisation called Black Death. He claimed he wanted to leave the organisation and that his only escape was raising the ransom. He also threatened that she might be fed to tigers if she were sold.
“He always made out that he was the one who saved me," Ayling told The Guardian a year later. "I looked at him like, what would I do without him? He said that if I escaped, not only would I die, he would as well. He was the only person who seemed to care that I would be free.”
Because of Herba's lies, Ayling found herself unsure of what to believe. All she knew was that she had to convince him she did believe him and even had an interest in him.
“I’d say, ‘In the future, when I’m released,’" she said. “Then he’d get excited about the thought of it, and him being in a happy mood was better for me, because then there’s more chance of him releasing me.” She added, ”Obviously, I had no interest, but I had to play it as if I did. It was the only thing I had to focus on to get out.”
After several days, one of Ayling's friends offered to pay £20,000 for her release. Six days after her abduction, Herba decided to release her. His plan was to walk into the consulate with Ayling, where she would claim that she had escaped her kidnapper and called Herba, whom she would say was her “only friend in Italy.”
The plan didn't work. “The police were like, ‘OK, what’s his phone number?’ And I didn’t know it… They obviously knew [I was making it up]. They’re not stupid."
This new docuseries is a terrifying reminder of what can happen when you don't believe women.
What happened after Chloe Ayling's kidnapping?
Ayling's story about Herba's kidnapping was called into question when police found CCTV footage of Ayling shopping with Herba and holding his hand. Some people thought the images proved that Ayling and Herba had known each other before the kidnapping and had, as Herba claimed, planned the entire thing together as a publicity stunt.
During the trial, it was revealed that the Black Death didn't exist and that Herba had planned the kidnapping with his brother. Herba was jailed for 16 years and nine months.
Ayling's story was questioned further after images of the model returning home smiling led some people to question her.
“It was just so big and overpowering,” said Ayling to the BBC of the media storm that followed her return home. "It was blown out of proportion, there were things that were missed out and it was going in a direction that was not true."
She was even grilled by Piers Morgan. “Why would you lie to the police about such a key thing?” he asked about the shopping trip on Good Morning Britain. “It’s not insignificant to be going shopping with the alleged kidnapper and buying new shoes.” He added, “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.”
Ayling published a memoir, Kidnapped, about her experience.
About the BBC's series Kidnapped
The story of Chloe Ayling's kidnapping is set to re-enter the discourse as a new BBC series based on Ayling's book and on intensive research and interviews is set to land this week. Starring Nadia Parks as Ayling, the show aims to re-examine the cultural response to Ayling's abduction. Reads the BBC description: “It asks why Chloe was blamed for her kidnappers’ crimes? How do we relate to survivors of crime who make the front pages? And how does it feel to be an ordinary person, caught up in events so extraordinary that you aren’t believed?”
Ayling hopes that the series will help people understand her story. "All I wanted was [the] facts to be laid out and everyone to know what actually happened," she told the BBC. “This should be a lesson for people not to judge victims based on the way they act or react.”
See the trailer for Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story here:
Model Chloe Ayling was kidnapped in Italy back in 2017, but was vilified for accusing her attacker.
