In the early 90s, Donald Trump judged the world’s biggest modelling competition - since hit by allegations of abuse. This is how the people who were there remember it

… Scores of teenage girls in evening dresses and miniskirts, some as young as 14, danced under disco lights. It could have been a high school prom, were it not for the crowd of older men surrounding them.

As the evening wore on, some of the men – many old enough to be the girls’ fathers, or even grandfathers – joined them on the dancefloor, pressing themselves against the girls. One balding man in a suit wrapped his arms around two young models, leering into a film camera that was documenting the evening: “Can you get some beautiful women around me, please?”

The party aboard the Spirit of New York was one of several events that Donald Trump, then 45, attended with a group of 58 aspiring young models that September. They had travelled from around the world to compete in Elite’s Look of the Year competition, an annual event that had been running since 1983 and was already credited with launching the careers of Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen and Stephanie Seymour. At stake was a life-changing prize: a $150,000 contract with the world’s then leading modelling agency, Elite Model Management, run by John Casablancas.

Three decades on, a very different picture of the competition is beginning to emerge. Over the last six months, the Guardian has spoken to several dozen former Look of the Year contestants, as well as industry insiders, and obtained 12 hours of previously unseen, behind-the-scenes footage. The stories we have heard suggest that Casablancas, and some of the men in his orbit, used the contest to engage in sexual relationships with vulnerable young models. Some of these allegations amount to sexual harassment, abuse or exploitation of teenage girls; others are more accurately described as rape.

… Yet the competition is more than a footnote in the Donald Trump story. In time, it would prove to be the foundation of his pivot into reality TV. He even married a former Look of the Year contestant: the current first lady, Melania Trump…