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Model's hubby 'had affair'
19/07/2006 11:05 - (SA)
New York - A 19-year-old former employee of Christie Brinkley's husband, Peter Cook, says he hired her and seduced her with lavish gifts, then attempted to woo her back with repeated notes and phone calls after she broke off the affair.
Diana Bianchi told the New York Post that Cook, 47, made advances on her shortly after she took a job at his architecture firm.
The interview appeared less than a week after Brinkley, the 52-year-old supermodel, announced through publicist Elliot Mintz that she and Cook, her fourth husband, had separated.
They married in 1996 and have an eight-year-old daughter. Brinkley's 10-year-old son from a previous marriage was also living with the couple.
Bianchi said she first met Cook when she was a 17-year-old clerk at a toy store in the posh Southampton beach resort, but he made his intentions clear when she was a year older and his employee, typing in a computer document as she stood by his desk, "How would you feel if I told you I was attracted to you?"
"And I was like, 'Uh, I dunno,"' Bianchi said. "I didn't really answer him. I was kind of thinking, 'Are you serious? Are you kidding?' I really didn't know what to do at that point."
Cook continued to woo her and told the teen that his marriage to the supermodel was on the rocks, Bianchi said.
Unhappy and having problems
"He was telling me that he was unhappy and that he was having problems at home," Bianchi said.
Bianchi's attorney, Joseph Tacopina, told the Post that the pair had a sexual relationship that spanned about one year.
The lawyer described the couple's relationship as consensual, but claimed Cook's role as employer and his gifts of a car, money and jewellery could possibly constitute sexual harassment.
Mintz said he had no comment on Bianchi's claims, which emerged in press reports on Monday, though he told the Post he did not believe Brinkley and the teenager had met.
Brinkley is "just a woman who at this moment is completely preoccupied with the protection of her children, trying to isolate them from all of this coverage, and trying to heal", he said.
Newspaper reports said Brinkley first learned about the affair when Bianchi's stepfather, a Southampton police officer, approached her in June at Southampton High School's graduation ceremony where she was speaking.
Tacopina said that Bianchi, an aspiring singer, quit her job at Cook's firm within a few months after she started in May 2005 because of the stress.
"Being put in the position that (Cook) put her in, which was to be financially dependent on him ... as long as she provided sex - that's the relationship that the law frowns upon when you're an employer and an employee," he said.
Bianchi said she finally broke up with Cook in April because she "felt uncomfortable".
But even after the break up, Bianchi said Cook "kept trying to get in touch with me" by repeated e-mails and telephone messages. "And I wouldn't call him back."
- AP
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South Africa
