Jared Leto accused of sex offences by women when they were teenagers

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault, abuse and grooming

Jared Leto has been accused of sexual offences, including rape, and inappropriate behaviour by 10 women when they were teenagers.

The BBC documentary, Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret, hears from 10 women who allege that the US musician and singer assaulted them, threatened them with rape or harassed them between 2002 and 2016. Leto would have been in his thirties and forties at the time.

All the women were under the age of 18.

Despite repeated attempts to contact Jared Leto, he has not responded to the allegations put to him by the BBC.

Leto lured teenagers to hotels for abuse

Isabel* told the BBC that she was sexually assaulted by Leto in a “dingy gross motel” in 2002, when she was 17.

She assumed they would be going somewhere else so waited for Leto in the room while he took a shower, he then called her into the bathroom.

Isabel said:

I don’t think there was many words exchanged and he opened the shower curtain and started kissing me

She told the BBC that he forced her to masturbate him by grabbing her hand. She stopped him and asked to leave, the actor put on a towel and checked the corridor before letting her out. It was only later, when she looked up the actor online, that she realised he was in his forties.

‘Age is just a number’

Alex* was lured to Leto’s hotel under the pretence of an after-party, but was instead threatened with sexual assault. She was 19, but Leto thought she was 17, she said.

This happened in 2013 when his band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, played at the O2 Arena in London. Leto was 41 years old at the time.

Alex was offered free VIP tickets as many female models were, and was taken to a backstage room only for the models. Brad*, a crew member claimed that request was “direct from Jared”.

After the gig, Leto’s female assistant invited Alex to an after-party at Shoreditch House, a private members’ club in east London. Alex told Leto she was 17, as she “felt the need” to pretend to be younger around him. She says he replied:

 Age is just a number, and anyway, we’re in Europe.

After being taken to his hotel room, Alex asked him for a phone charger or cash so she could go home. When he refused, she asked to sleep on the chaise longue in the room. Leto told her that if she did, she would wake up “with a dick in her ass”.

Alex is in no doubt that this was a calculated plan to sexually assault her, aided by the people around him.

The assistant knew what to say, to lure me into his hotel room

Leto didn’t care about age of consent

Taylor*, then aged 14, met the musician at a signing after Thirty Seconds to Mars performed at a festival in 2005. She held out a t-shirt to sign, but Leto insisted on signing her breasts. She said it would’ve been “very obvious” she was a teenager.

He then instructed his security to take her backstage without asking her consent. Luckily, her mother intervened.

She told the BBC:

He looked at her and said, “It’s still a nice rack”. He just did not care.

Another victim, Clara*, said she first had sex with Leto in 2006, when she was 17 and he was 34, at his house in California. This was after a man close to Leto approached her on his behalf and asked for her phone number, while backstage at a Thirty Seconds to Mars gig.

Clara recalled a conversation with Leto about the age of consent. In California, sex with someone below the age of consent, which is 18, can be convicted of statutory rape.

Clara said:

He just kind of shrugged it off, like it wasn’t a huge concern for him.

Clara said they had sex three or four times, with age play being a part of it.

He told me, “I would like you to call me daddy”. And it was either pretend to be a little girl or “my little girl”.

There is no well-adjusted man in his 30s who’s going to look at a teenager and think…she would be a great partner.

Etta’s story

Etta* said Leto groomed her when she was 16, with him “abusing his celebrity status” to get her email address and phone number, which he then used to harass her with sexually explicit phone calls.

Leto knew she was 16, Etta told the BBC, which led to him asking questions about her being a virgin and having sexual “kinks”.

She said:

He did at least once mention him and I having sex at some point.

Leto then supposedly passed her number on to his friend ‘Christian’ under the guise of it being good for her modelling career. This man would call her and ask her to make porn, telling her it didn’t matter if she was underage. Etta now says she “would not be surprised” if Christian was, in fact, Leto.

Two years after the incidents, Leto asked Etta to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). When she refused, he “chuckled” about his lawyer’s concerns, she said in the documentary.

Four other women told the BBC that they were also subjected to sexual calls from Leto when they were underage. Two of the women say they also received calls, supposedly from other men, but who they also believe could’ve been Leto.

A long history of abuse in plain sight

These are the latest in a very long line of allegations about Leto. The BBC reported that journalists counted more than 120 “separate allegations made online relating to his behaviour towards women, some of them historical”.

Last year, allegations from Los Angeles DJ, Allie Teilz — who said Leto had assaulted her backstage at a gig, aged 17 — prompted others to speak out.

The post was a screenshot of her Facebook status from 2012 which read:

You’re not really in LA until Jared Leto tries to force himself on you backstage at an M83 show.. In a Kilt.. And a snow hat

Further to this, another nine women told US media outlet Air Mail last year about the inappropriate behaviour they had experienced or witnessed from Leto. He denied all the allegations.

It’s clear from reading these accounts that many people who worked for Leto allowed these abuses to happen. Much like Johnny Depp and other abusers, Leto is someone who has been operating in plain sight for years and who Hollywood protects.

*All names were changed to protect their identities

Featured image via Pearl & Dean

By Rachel Charlton-Dailey

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