A top modeling industry activist has called for business leaders to be hauled before lawmakers in Washington to investigate what role modeling agencies may have played in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal.

Sara Ziff is founder of the Model Alliance, a non-profit advocacy group calling for fair treatment, labor rights and safe working conditions for fashion industry workers.

“I’d like to see a proper investigation into how modeling agencies facilitated Epstein’s abuse,” she told the Guardian in an interview, adding that bringing the heads of the companies before the oversight committee is “totally appropriate”.

Ziff and more than 40 Epstein survivors have signed a letter sent to Letitia James, the New York attorney general, and congressmen Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie to ask for an inquiry into the issue. They say the number of people in the model business – agents, owners, scouts – whose names have come up in Epstein document releases and through witness testimony “point to more than a single predator operating in isolation”.

The letter describes a power structure in the fashion business that made model agencies “a pipeline through which vulnerable teenagers were regularly delivered to powerful predators” and describes Epstein as “not a rogue outlier, but a beneficiary of – and a participant in – this system”.

Citing public records, survivor testimony, investigative reporting, and entries in the US Department of Justice’s Epstein files releases, the letter states, “indicate that Epstein’s trafficking operation intersected directly with modeling agencies and executives who introduced him to young women and girls and facilitated his access to potential victims”.

Ziff, 42 and a former model, is no stranger to political pressure campaigns. Last year saw the passing of the New York Fashion Workers Act (FWA) for workers in the industry that could pave the way for unionization.

The letter calls for an investigation of modeling industry figures including Faith Kates, who ran Next Management, which represented Ziff; the late Jean-Luc Brunel, an Epstein associate and model management owner who died by suicide in jail while being investigated by French prosecutors for rape and trafficking of minors; and Gérald Marie, head of Elite Model Management’s European division, accused of rape by more than 15 former models, including Model Alliance member Carré Otis.

“It’s essential that attorney general James and representatives Massie and Khanna whether and how modeling agencies and agents facilitated Epstein’s abuse,” Ziff said “This deserves further scrutiny.”

Requests for comments from James and Massie were not immediately responded to. But Khanna said in a statement: “I will be taking this information to the oversight committee and will urge them to investigate this issue and subpoena individuals from the modeling industry who were involved in Epstein’s abuse. I am grateful to the survivors for speaking up and I will continue to fight for accountability.”

The call to investigate Epstein’s contacts with the modeling industry comes nine months after Model Alliance helped to push through the Fashion Workers Act that, Ziff said, has helped to address “an underlying power imbalance and to prevent this kind of abuse”.

The legislation was opposed by a group calling itself the Coalition for Fairness in Fashion, representing agencies including Next, Elite and Ford, that said it had not “not adequately account for the economic realities of operating a model management company in New York”.

Under the law, models are now able to reclaim power of attorney that had typically been handed over to agents as a condition of employment, protections against harassment and retaliation, safe work spaces, guaranteed overtime and lunch breaks. But the industry is now facing a number of problems, including a contraction of budgets, the replacement of models by actresses, influencers and celebrities, and threats from AI simulation.

But the law is only effective in New York. Model agents say it’s too soon to say how effective it has been though they see improvements in terms of awareness, though warn their role is limited in terms of how clients respond or in European capitals where the fashion industry is centered.

“Is it a silver bullet? No. There more work that needs to be done but it is one step toward prevention,” said Ziff.

Key provisions of the law include holding agencies liable for sending models to known abusers, Ziff said “by everything that is coming to light now” and limits on fees and expenses that effectively held models in debt to their agencies who would then be “put in the position of being sent to dinners with businessmen” just to be fed.

“There was a lot of questionable and even criminal behavior that had been normalized by the business,” she said. “I wouldn’t have spent over a decade doing this work if I had not experienced that kind of abuse myself. It’s remarkable that it’s taken this long for people to take it seriously.”

In 2011, Ziff released Picture Me, a documentary that followed her across a season of fashion shows in New York, Milan and Paris. Early in the film, she says in a voice over that the fashion industry is “based in fantasy but nothing comes without a catch” and it was like being a “living doll under constant superficial attention”.

“What looks like glamor on the outside was for many of us a system that routinely put teenagers into dangerous and exploitative situations,” she said. For all the top models who do well and were afforded some protection by virtue of their success, there were others who were more vulnerable to predation.

The aspirational fantasies that sustain the business, coupled with the secrets that it held, infused one another. “That’s part of what was so pernicious” Ziff said. “It is an aspirational industry, particularly for young women and girls. We’re not talking about a niche group of wealthy and powerful supermodels, we’re talking about a large group who aspire to gain entry to a business that can be incredibly abusive.

“It extends well beyond the industry. It should concern people who care about workers and women’s rights more broadly,” she adds.

Her emergence from model to documentarian and activist did not come without cost. In the film, she’s seen receiving a check for $110,000 for her fashion work. After the documentary was released, she said, her earnings dropped to zero.

“It certainly didn’t help my modeling career, let’s put it that way. I went from earning good money and putting myself through school to going into debt and having to sell my home,” Ziff said. “But this work has been far more meaningful. So I certainly don’t regret it. It’s not really done to speak out about abuse but I wouldn’t say that’s unique to the modeling industry”.