Four women have accused Oscar-winning actor and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto of criminal sexual conduct when they were teenagers, in a new BBC documentary, per bbc.com.
Six other women allege inappropriate behaviour, including sexualised phone calls and comments, during encounters between 2002 and 2016.
The allegations are made in the documentary titled, Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret. Ten women spoke to the programme, nine of them publicly for the first time. The BBC said it had corroborated a number of accounts with friends and family members who were told at the time, and had seen photographs and messages supporting some claims.
One woman, named as Isabel, said she was sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom in 2002 when she was 17. She said she met Leto, then in his 30s, after showing him around the Las Vegas store where she worked and agreed to meet at his hotel. She alleges he kissed her and used her hand to masturbate himself. She said she pulled away and asked to leave.
A second woman, Alex, said Leto threatened her with sexual assault in 2013 when she was 19. She said she was invited to a Thirty Seconds to Mars concert at the O2 in London through her modelling agency and later to an after-party. She alleges she was then lured to a hotel room where she was alone with Leto, then 41. When she asked if she could sleep on a chaise longue, he replied that she would wake up “with a dick in her ass,” she alleges. She said she left.
The BBC said it had seen a text exchange in which she told a friend what had happened at the time.
A third woman, Clara, alleges she had under-age sex with Leto in California when she was 17 and he was 34. In California the age of consent is 18, and sex with a minor can constitute statutory rape. She said she met Leto backstage at a concert in 2006 after an associate approached her for his number. She said she discussed the age of consent with him and he “shrugged it off”. She said he told her to call him “daddy”.
The fourth woman, Etta, said she was 16 when she met Leto at a modelling agency in Los Angeles in 2014 with her mother. She said he asked for her email address to invite them to his Oscar party, but contact quickly became sexual. She alleges he made repeated sexually explicit phone calls, asked if she was a virgin and suggested they should have sex. She said she was later sent a non-disclosure agreement by Leto’s lawyer to prevent her discussing their relationship, which the BBC said it had seen. She refused to sign.
Four further women said they received strange and often sexual phone calls from Leto when they were younger. Two said they were also called by other men at the same time, who they believe may have been Leto.
Another woman, Taylor, said that in 2005, when she was 14, Leto signed a T-shirt she was wearing across her breasts and told her she had a “nice rack” during an autograph signing at a music festival. She said he instructed a security guard to take her backstage, and repeated the comment when her mother confronted him. She said the encounter stopped her attending concerts.
Two men who worked with Thirty Seconds to Mars for several years told the BBC that staff felt uncomfortable about Leto’s interactions with teenage girls. One said crew were instructed to offer free VIP tickets to female models on Leto’s direct request and to provide a backstage room for them. Both said girls were regularly invited to his dressing room or to a house where the band was recording.
The BBC said it had counted more than 120 separate allegations about Leto’s behaviour towards women posted online over a number of years. Last year, Los Angeles DJ Allie Teilz posted on social media alleging she was assaulted by Leto when she was 17. Nine women also accused him of sexual impropriety in an article by US outlet Air Mail last year. He denied those allegations.
Despite repeated attempts to contact him, Leto has not responded to the allegations put to him by the BBC, the corporation said.
Leto, now 54, has been a prominent actor since the 1990s and won the Academy Award for best supporting actor in 2014 for Dallas Buyers Club. He has also appeared in Fight Club, Blade Runner 2049 and Suicide Squad. His band Thirty Seconds to Mars, formed in 1998, is due to tour mainland Europe and the UK next spring, including shows at the O2 in London and Co-op Live in Manchester.
The documentary comes amid renewed scrutiny of historic allegations against high-profile figures in the entertainment industry and questions about the use of NDAs in cases involving alleged sexual misconduct.