Warning: Contains graphic details of alleged sexual offences and misconduct, as well as strong language
Four women have accused Oscar-winning actor and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto of criminal sexual conduct, with the alleged offences having taken place when they were teenagers.
One of the women says she was sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom when she was 17. Another says the Hollywood star threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19, and had been unexpectedly left alone with him in a hotel room.
A third describes how she had under-age sex with the star in California when she was 17 – which would be classified as statutory rape. Leto “shrugged off” a conversation about the age of consent being 18 in the US state, she says.
The fourth woman describes being groomed by Leto, saying he abused his celebrity status by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls to her when she was 16. On at least one occasion, she says he suggested they should have sex.
She was subsequently sent a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to prevent her from talking about her relationship with Leto, which the BBC has seen. However, she refused to sign.
Four further women also say they received strange and often very sexual phone calls from Leto when they were younger.
Another woman says, when she was 14, he 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.
In total, 10 women have spoken to the BBC documentary – Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret – with nine of them sharing their stories publicly for the first time.
All the women say they encountered Leto between 2002 and 2016, when he was in his 30s and 40s. He is now 54.
“This was 25 years ago… he has gotten away with it,” says one of his alleged victims.
The BBC has corroborated a number of the women’s accounts with friends and family who were told about the encounters with Leto at the time. In some cases, we have also seen pictures and messages that support the women’s accounts.
Two men who worked with Leto’s band for many years also told the documentary how uncomfortable staff felt about the way Leto would interact with teenage girls, sometimes inviting them backstage to his dressing room or inviting them to the house where he was recording.
“I think everyone thought the age gap was way too big,” one says.
Despite repeated attempts to contact Jared Leto before publication, he did not respond to the allegations put to him by the BBC.
After this story was published, Leto said in a statement released by his representatives to the BBC: “I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life. These claims are absolutely and categorically false”.
