Jared Leto has been accused by four women of criminal sexual conduct.
According to the BBC documentary – Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret – which is currently airing on the BBC iPlayer, the alleged offences took place when they were teenagers.
One of the women claims she was sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom when she was 17-years-old by the Oscar-winning actor and Thirty Seconds To Mars frontman, while another alleged the star threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19 and had been unexpectedly left alone with him in a hotel room.
A third described how she had under-age sex with the star in California when she was 17 – which would be classified as statutory rape and she claims that Leto “shrugged off” a conversation about the age of consent being 18 in the US state.
Another woman also alleged she was groomed by Leto, claiming he abused his celebrity status by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls to her when she was 16. According to the BBC (via BBC News), she was subsequently sent a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to prevent her from talking about her relationship with Leto, which she refused to sign.
In total, 10 women spoke in the BBC documentary, with nine of them sharing their stories publicly for the first time, saying they encountered Leto between 2002 and 2016. NME has contacted representatives of Leto for comment.
Four of them said they received strange and often very sexual phone calls from him when they were younger.
Another woman alleged that when she was 14, that Leto instructed a security guard to take her backstage at a music festival after having made a lewd comment about her chest during an autograph-signing. The girl’s mother confronted Leto, but he repeated the comment, it is alleged.
The BBC claims it has corroborated a number of the women’s accounts with friends and family who were told about the encounters with Leto at the time and the corporation says it has also seen pictures and messages that support the women’s accounts.
Two men who worked with his band also told the documentary how uncomfortable staff felt about the way Leto would allegedly interact with teenage girls, sometimes inviting them backstage to his dressing room or inviting them to the house where he was recording.
The BBC claims that despite repeated attempts to contact Leto, he has not responded to the allegations put to him by the corporation.
It comes just over a year after the singer and actor was accused of sexual misconduct by nine women, allegations representatives for the singer denied at the time.
In a report published by Air Mail last June, multiple women accused Leto of inappropriate behaviour. The allegations dated back to the early 2000s, with one woman calling it “an open secret” that he texted sexual remarks to teenage models.
Allegations against the Thirty Seconds to Mars singer emerged the previous month, when Los Angeles based DJ Allie Teilz shared on old Facebook post of hers, written in 2012, on her Instagram Story.
“Youre [sic] not really in L.A. until Jared Leto tries to force himself on you backstage… In a kilt.. And a snow hat,” she wrote. “I was assaulted and traumatised by this creep when I was 17,” she added in separate story. “He knew my age and didn’t care. What he did was predatory, terrifying and unacceptable.”
A representative of Leto “expressly denied” the multiple accusations reported in the Air Mail expose – including Teilz’s – with the representative saying the claims were “demonstrably false”.
For more help, advice or more information regarding sexual harassment, assault and rape in the UK, visit the Rape Crisis charity website. In the US, visit RAINN.
