Brit model Chloe Ayling says autism explains 'odd' behaviour after kidnapping

After British glamour model Chloe Ayling was drugged and kidnapped at a photoshoot in 2017, she was accused of staging the whole thing.

The outlandish events she described, coupled with her unemotional retelling of the story in media interviews, led many to believe it was all a publicity stunt. But a new BBC documentary challenges these claims, revealing that Chloe’s behaviour during and after the kidnap was the result of her undiagnosed autism.

In the documentary, she says: “For ages I just said I’m not an emotional person, but now I realise that, no matter how hard I try, I just can’t [express emotion]. It’s a big relief actually in being diagnosed, knowing I don’t have to keep trying to change something – that’s just not going to happen because there’s a reason for it.” It comes after a woman searches her husband's name online and awful discovery leads to his arrest.

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Chloe was 20 when Polish national Lukasz Herba abducted her after luring her to a fake fashion shoot in Milan, Italy. She was grabbed from behind, injected with ketamine, bundled into a suitcase and driven to a remote farm building, where she was held captive for six days.

Herba sent disturbing pictures to Chloe’s manager of her lying unconscious in skimpy clothing along with a €300,000 (£260,000) ransom demand, threatening to auction her off as a sex slave or feed her to tigers if he failed to pay.

Chloe was eventually released and Herba was sentenced to 16 years and nine months after being convicted of her kidnapping. But many refused to believe the story of Chloe’s terrifying ordeal.

Doubts began circulating when she emerged from her mum’s house in Coulsdon, South London, to deliver a statement, saying: “I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour.” Many felt her robotic delivery, slight smile and her outfit of vest top and shorts were at odds with the seriousness of the situation.

Others looked for inconsistencies in her story, questioning why she had gone shopping with her kidnapper to buy shoes, not taking the opportunity to escape. A stint on Celebrity Big Brother the following year let to accusations she was a money-grabber who wanted only to be famous. Recalling the criticism, she says: “The aftermath affected me more than the kidnap.”

In the documentary, Chloe, now 28, gets a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, which she says explains a lot about her life growing up. She says: “I had a lot of difficulties with communication. I’d react in the wrong way. If I was being told off, I would smile. I just had the wrong reactions to things. My mum would come with me on school trips because I wouldn’t be able to say what I wanted or express how I was feeling.”

Chloe’s diagnosis with ASD, a developmental condition affecting communication, makes complete sense to her former manager, Phil Green. He tells the documentary: “She wasn’t a typical model-about-town – she didn’t seem to have many friends, or hang about with other models. She lived at home with her mum. Her reaction to everything that happened was so unemotional.”

Phil, who met Chloe when she was 19, lashes out at Italian prosecutors for putting her story in the public domain against her wishes, forcing her to stay in Italy for weeks after her release and taking her back to the farm where she was held captive.

He says: “If that had happened to an Italian girl in Britain, she would have been allowed to go home immediately to be with her family. My feeling then was that they didn’t believe her and wanted to see her reaction.” Bizarrely, Chloe was only found because her kidnapper, Lukasz Herba, walked her into the British consulate in Milan.

Herba, from the West Midlands, was later described in court as a “narcissistic fantasist” who had become obsessed with Chloe after becoming friends on Facebook. With the help of his brother Michal, also jailed for his part in the kidnap, Herba concocted an elaborate plan, posing as a photographer called Andre Lazio to book her for the modelling job in Milan. He was sentenced to 16 years and nine months in prison, later reduced to just over 11 years on appeal.

Chloe is now desperately trying to rebuild her life and has recently purchased a property in North Wales, attracted by the peace and quiet and the fact that no one knows who she is there. And while the autism diagnosis has helped her understand the backlash against her, she is keen to stress it does not excuse the doubters.

She says: “Autism plays a big part in the way I reacted, and that was confusing to neurotypical people. However, there are other reasons why people could react in the way that I did, or in an ‘unusual’ way that doesn’t fit the normal box.

“People disassociate with events that have happened or have a delayed reaction, especially after trauma. So, it can’t all be put down to a diagnosis. And that shouldn’t affect the way people treated me.”

• Chloe Ayling: My Unbelievable Kidnapping is available on BBC iPlayer