Actress accuses Jonathan Leder of abuse, days after Emily Ratajkowski’s sexual assault claim

6

View
comments

An actress who had an affair with photographer Jonathan Leder has alleged that he had also abused her — just days after Emily Ratajkowski published an essay accusing him of sexually assaulting her during a nude shoot at his home in 2012. 

Nola Palmer, 29, revealed in a candid Instagram post on Monday that she was the ‘crazy’ actress who was featured in the naked Polaroid pictures that Leder had allegedly shown Ratajkowski that night. The model claimed that after the shoot, Leder suddenly put his fingers inside her, and she had to remove them ‘with force.’ 

Palmer praised Ratajkowski, 29, for her ‘bravery,’ saying it had given her the strength to finally come forward with her own story about the photographer after he ‘stole [her] youth’ when she was just 17 years old. 

‘Since Emily’s article has dropped I have been a wreck,’ Palmer wrote. ‘Reading her words and the ways in which she described Jonathan instantly brought me to tears. I was in a state of panic before I could even finish the article. 

‘I have written and rewritten a statement over and over again these past five days. Then slept for 24 hours due to the fear of crossing someone who basically stole my youth. 

‘I have been carrying around the pain and trauma of Jonathan and his abuse for a decade now. I have gone so far as changing my name because in my mind he owned it and I could not look at that name without seeing him.’

Palmer said what Ratajkowski had written about Leder in her essay was eerily similar to her own experience with the photographer.  

‘Everything in Emily’s article felt so familiar, it felt as if he was there standing behind me as I read it with his body pressing into my back, daring me to challenge him,’ she explained. ‘I have spent ten plus years emotionally tied to my abuser, unable to let him fully go because at seventeen he broke me down and built me back up into his own image, an image I have been at war with ever since. 

‘But for the first time I am able to publicly say, Jonathan Leder was my abuser and that is thanks to Emily Ratajkowski and her bravery,’ she continued. ‘Emily, I am so sorry that this man hurt you. I wish I had the strength then to warn you. But you speaking out has already helped me in my own healing and for that I will be forever grateful.’ 

‘I am so unbelievably struck by your courage and your incredible ability to recount a truly harrowing moment in your life in such a thoughtful and insightful way. It is your strength that has inspired me to share with everyone that I am the “Crazy Actress” Jonathan Leder spoke about that night.’ 

Palmer went on to say that even though she and Ratajkowski are friends, they had never shared their alleged experiences with Leder with each other. 

‘I am sad that during my friendship with Emily we were too afraid to share our abuse and it is just another demonstration of the long-lasting hold someone can have on you when they’re in a position of power,’ she wrote. 

‘However, I am so grateful that we are moving into a space where men are being held accountable for their predatory and damaging behavior,’ she added. ‘It’s women like you Em that give us all strength to tell our own stories. 

‘The last five days have brought up old wounds and a lot of pain which will hopefully lead to an enormous amount of healing. Thank you Emily.’ 

Ratajkowski was one of the hundreds of people who liked Palmer’s post on Monday.  

DailyMail.com has reached out to Leder for comment.  

Palmer’s accusations against Leder come less than a week after The Cut published Ratajkowski’s powerful essay about what it means to own her image as a model.    

In the piece, she recalled traveling to Leder’s home to pose for an unpaid editorial shoot that was arranged by her agent when she was just 20 years old.

Ratajkowski detailed how she sat at Leder’s kitchen table before the shoot, saying he showed her naked Polaroids he had taken of his former paramour, but she never named Palmer. 

‘He talked about his “crazy” ex-wife and his affair with a “crazy” actress, now 21 (a year older than me, I noted). He told me about his marriage’s undoing; that the actress, whom Jonathan had cast for a short film he’d been making at the time, came to live with them,’ she wrote. 

‘He showed me naked pictures, Polaroids, he’d taken during their affair. She seemed so vulnerable in Jonathan’s photos, even though I could tell she was trying to look strong and grown up from the way she held her face square to the camera, chin up, her hair falling perfectly over one eye.

‘”No one has shot her better,” he said over his shoulder, as I continued to riffle through the Polaroids.’ 

Ratajkowski admitted that looking at the images made her feel competitive. She wanted to prove to Leder that she was ‘the sexiest and smartest of them all.’   

She said she drank copious amounts of red wine during the shoot, and she noted that she was ‘very, very drunk’ by the end of the night, despite only being 20 at the time.

‘I was cold, shivering, and huddled under a blanket,’ she wrote. ‘Jonathan and I were on his couch, and the rough texture of his jeans rubbed against my bare legs.’

Ratajkowski described how Leder began asking her about her ‘boyfriends,’ and she said she ‘remembers talking a lot’ about her dating history and the men she loved, while ‘absentmindedly rubbing [her] feet against one another and against his for warmth.’  

‘He told me he liked “that foot thing you’re doing,” and I remember this moment more clearly than anything else,’ she said. ‘I hate that Jonathan commented on something I’ve done throughout my life to comfort myself. I hate that sometimes, even now, when I rub my feet together because I’m cold or afraid or exhausted, I think of Jonathan.

‘Most of what came next was a blur except for the feeling,’ Ratajkowski continued. ‘I don’t remember kissing, but I do remember his fingers suddenly being inside of me. Harder and harder and pushing and pushing like no one had touched me before or has touched me since.

‘I could feel the shape of myself and my ridges, and it really, really hurt. I brought my hand instinctively to his wrist and pulled his fingers out of me with force. I didn’t say a word. He stood up abruptly and scurried silently into the darkness up the stairs.’

When contacted by The Cut, Leder denied Ratajkowski’s allegations, telling the publication that they were ‘too tawdry and childish to respond to.’

Referring to nude and topless shoots that Ratajkowski has done in the years since he worked with her, Leder continued: ‘You do know who we are talking about right? This is the girl that was naked in Treats! magazine, and bounced around naked in the Robin Thicke video at that time.

‘You really want someone to believe she was a victim?’

In a statement made to DailyMail.com, Leder also denied Ratajkowski’s claims about the shoot, saying: ‘Ms. Ratajkowski’s allegations are totally false. I feel bad for her that she is at the point in her career where she has to resort to tactics like this to gain press and publicity. It is shameful.

‘I think it is also shameful for [New York Magazine] to publish such sordid and tawdry and unsubstantiated allegations against anyone.’

After the incident on the couch, Ratajkowski said she went to bed in the room where they had started the shoot, recalling that she was ‘confused as to why Jonathan had left without a word and terrified that he would come back.’

‘Later in the morning, I woke with a vicious hangover,’ she said. ‘I dressed quickly in the clothes I’d been wearing the day before and noticed that my hands were shaking.’

Upon checking her Instagram, she noticed that Jonathan had already put up one of her Polaroids from the previous night.

Ratajkowski also detailed several instances during the shoot that Leder allegedly made comments about her body. She said he branded her first set of Polaroids ‘boring and stiff,’ and then asked the makeup artist to ‘f**k up her hair’ before she posed nude.

Despite the fact that she had only been working professionally for a few years, she said she had no fears about posing nude, noting that she had been ‘told by plenty of photographers and agents that her body was one of the things that made her stand out.’

‘My body felt like a superpower,’ she wrote. ‘I was confident naked — unafraid and proud.’

However, she admitted that ‘a part of her disassociated’ when she undressed, and she said that she’d ‘had so much wine that giant black spots were expanding and floating in front of her eyes’ when she began to pose for Leder on the bed.

When the pair reviewed that second batch of Polaroids together, Ratajkowski said the photographer told her he thought she would be ‘a big girl… big-boned, fat,’ based on images of her that he had found on Google, in which she appeared curvier.

As they continued shooting, he picked out a particular image that he said he liked ‘because of her nipples.’

‘This one is so good because of your nipples,’ Ratajkowski said he told her. ‘Your nipples change so much from hard to soft. But I like them when they’re gigantic. I love when they’re giant. Giant and exaggerated.’

She recalled being ‘confused’ by his comments, adding that she ‘somehow felt that he meant to insult [her].’

After the images from the shoot were published in a magazine a few months later, Ratajkowski said she pushed the experience out of her mind, and ‘never told anyone about what happened.’

Although the essay is the first time that Ratajkowski has made the assault allegations against Leder, she has previously spoken out about the shoot back in 2016, when the photographer revealed that he was publishing a book of the nude images he took of her.

At the time, Ratajkowski insisted that she had not given her consent for the images to be published anywhere other than the magazine they were originally taken for, and she slammed Leder’s book as a ‘violation’ in a series of tweets.

In his statement to DailyMail.com about Ratajkowski’s article in The Cut, Leder hit back at the model’s criticism of his books, writing that he ‘was totally within his legal rights’ to publish them.   

The photographer shared details from his shoot with Ratajkowski during an interview with Highsnobiety in February 2017. He described her as being ‘one of the most comfortable models he had ever worked with in terms of her body.’

‘She was neither shy nor self-conscious in any way,’ he told the online publication. ‘To say she enjoyed being naked is an understatement. I don’t know if it empowered her, or she enjoyed the attention, but I can say, out of the 100 or so Polaroids we shot those two nights, only in a handful does she have clothes on.’

Leder recalled the experience as being a ‘great shoot,’ adding that they ‘had a great time, good conversation, and worked late into the night.’  

Highsnobiety released an apology to Ratajkowski last week for giving Leder an outlet to defend his work. 

‘As a staff, we are deeply saddened and disgusted that Highsnobiety played a role in that situation with our interview, one in which Leder defends his work and gaslights Ratajkowski, invalidating her real, lived experience of trauma,’ the statement reads. 

‘First and foremost, we would like this statement to serve as an apology to Ratajkowski, and also as a thank you for holding us accountable by mentioning our article specifically.

‘While our team discussed retracting the interview altogether, we believe it is important to keep it published as a measure of transparency, as a record of how women’s voices are so often silenced, and how common it is for publications to be complicit on these issues.’ 

Since Ratajkowski’s essay was published, Leder had all but disappeared from social media, but Heather Tynan, the editorial director of his company, Imperial Publishing, released a statement last week attacking the model and accusing her of trying to drum up press for herself with the story.   

‘We are all deeply disturbed to read Ms. Ratajkowski’s latest (false) statements to NY mag in her never-ending search for press and publicity,’ she said in the statement released on Imperial Publishing’s website. 

‘Of course Mr. Leder totally denies her outrageous allegations of being “assaulted.” It is grotesque and sad that she is so vindictive to lie in such a way to the press routinely.’

Tynan claimed Ratajkowski’s sexual assault accusation against Leder was revenge for him publishing an $80 book of nude photos of her, titled ‘Emily Ratajkowski,’ years after their shoot in the Catskills.    

In her essay for The Cut, Ratajkowski said that some of the images in the photography book were posted on Leder’s Instagram and ‘among the most revealing and vulgar Polaroids’ he had taken of her.   

The model recalled being ‘livid and frantic’ after learning of the book’s publication, saying she was afraid of what it could do to her reputation as an actress. She explained that she had been warned to ‘shy away from being “sexy” in order to be taken seriously.’

Ratajkowski contacted her lawyer, who sent a cease-and-desist letter to Leder and the gallery that was planning to exhibit his images of her to coincide with the release of the book.

‘My lawyer argued that Jonathan had no right to use the images beyond their agreed-upon usage,’ she said. ‘When I agreed to shoot with Jonathan, I had consented only for the photos to be printed in the magazine they were intended for.’

However, the gallery went to the New York Times with a signed release that gave Leder the rights to publish the images in whatever capacity he saw fit.

Ratajkowski maintains that she never signed a release, and her agent who arranged the shoot  — who no longer works in the industry — also insists she didn’t sign anything on her behalf.

The model was among a number of female stars who had their nude photos published on controversial site 4chan after an iCloud hack in 2014, and she said the idea of Leder having free reign over the shoot images ‘terrified’ her, particularly because of what that meant for all of the ‘other thousands, maybe millions’ of photos that she had posed for during her career.

But despite her lawyer’s insistence that the signed model release ‘must have been forged,’ Ratajkowski was advised that pursuing a lawsuit against Leder and the gallery that eventually exhibited his work, would be ‘fruitless,’ and incredibly costly — which, she said, she couldn’t afford.

‘The problem with justice, or even the pursuit of justice, in the U.S. is that it costs. A lot,’ she explained. ‘For the four days of letters and calls for which I had enlisted my lawyer’s services, I’d racked up a bill of nearly $8,000. And while I did have fame, I didn’t have the kind of money I’d told Jonathan I hoped to have one day.

‘I’d heard from friends that Jonathan was a rich kid who had never needed a paycheck in his life. My dad was a high-school teacher; my mom was an English teacher. I had no one in my life to swoop in and help cover the costs.’

She was also informed that a successful lawsuit would not necessarily prevent the publication of the books, but only give her the opportunity to try and claim some of the profits from their sale.

Leder has since published multiple editions of the book through his company, Imperial Publishing, while also sharing several ‘unseen’ Polaroids of Ratajkowski on his Instagram account, which has since been deleted following the publication of the model’s essay. 

Tynan later edited her statement about Ratajkowski’s account, but she still called her ‘vindictive’ and ‘sad’ while discrediting her accusations. 

‘We were all deeply disturbed to read Ms. Ratajkowski’s latest false statements to NY Magazine,’ the new statement reads. 

‘While we understand that Ms. Ratajkowski no longer feels that the images represent her in the way she would like, and are probably detrimental to her career as an actress and celebrity, nonetheless, her recent accusations are based in fiction and not in fact, and the facts should matter.

‘Mr. Leder completely denies her outrageous libelous allegations of being “assaulted.” It is grotesque and sad that she is so vindictive about the publication of the photos.

‘It is also not our first encounter with her wrath.’  

Imperial Publishing has continued to sell books featuring images of Ratajkowski from the 2012 shoot, including first edition copies that were just ‘found in storage’ that cost $250 apiece.  

Tynan called the cease-and-desist letter the company had received from Ratajkowski’s lawyer a ‘bullying scare tactic.’ Along with the statement, the company shared a copy of its lawyer’s response that proves they ‘had every legal right’ to publish the images of her. 

‘It is disheartening to us that NY Magazine would publish such a tawdry and baseless article, yet sadly not surprising,’ the current statement reads.  

‘We believe in the work and know that it very popular amongst Emily’s fans. It is unfortunate that Ms. Ratajkowski has been at odds with it ever since her career as an actress took off.

‘We do not feel that we should be bullied by a celebrity though, and cease publication because she has decided that the photographs are no longer in her best interest,’ the statement continues.

‘We have every legal right to publish our books of Ms. Ratajkowski — despite what she has tried to maintain to the press.

‘Ms. Ratajkowski knows that, and her lawyers know that. She knows she has no legal recourse to stop publication, so bad mouthing the photographer (again) with false and salacious, baseless accusations seems to be her newfound answer.

‘We understand that she would like to ‘control her image,’ but this is not the way to go about it.’