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, he has not responded to the allegations put to him by the BBC.
The address she was given turned out to be a “dingy gross motel”, but she says she presumed they would be heading out somewhere else.
Isabel says she was sitting on the bed waiting for Leto to get ready, when he called her into the bathroom so the pair could talk while he showered.
“I don’t think there was many words exchanged and he opened the shower curtain and started kissing me,” she tells the documentary.
He then grabbed her hand and used it to masturbate himself, she says.
Taken by surprise, the then-teenager says she pulled away and told him she wanted to leave.
Putting on a towel, Leto went outside and appeared to check who was around, she says, before letting her out of the room.
It was only later, she says, when she looked up the actor online, that she realised he was in his 30s.
In the 2010s, Thirty Seconds to Mars was headlining in major international arenas, and crew working with the band would call local modelling agencies to offer female models free VIP tickets, according to one ex-crew member we are calling Brad.
“That [request] was direct from Jared,” he says.
There would be a backstage room for the models, he confirms, describing the task of requesting only females as “a little bit uncomfortable”.
Ex-model Alex says her agency was invited to the band’s concert at London’s O2 arena in 2013. Leto’s female assistant then invited her to an after-party at Shoreditch House in east London, she says.
Alex was 19 at the time, but says to protect herself she “felt the need” to pretend to be younger when she met Leto.
She says she told him she was 17, and that Leto, then 41, replied: “Age is just a number, and anyway, we’re in Europe.”
Although her phone battery was dying and she felt drunk, Alex says, one of Leto’s assistants encouraged her to go to another party at a nearby hotel later.
“I get into the hotel room, it’s really dark, and then I see that it’s just him,” she tells the documentary. “Weren’t there supposed to be other people?”
She says she then asked whether he had a phone charger or any cash, so she could get home, but that Leto said no to both.
Out of options, Alex says she considered whether she might be able to sleep on the chaise longue in the room.
But when she asked Leto if she could do that, Alex says the star responded by saying that, if she did, she would wake up “with a dick in her ass”.
He repeated this response several times, she says – and it was then that she realised “I’m not safe” and left the room.
Alex says she later texted a friend to tell her what had happened.
“He was threatening sexual assault, you should report him,” her friend replied.
For a long time, Alex says she tried to dismiss what happened, but she now believes the hotel encounter had been “all planned out”.
“The assistant knew what to say, to lure me into his hotel room,” she tells the BBC.
Brad, the former crew member, describes young girls joining Leto on stage for final songs at gigs, and then crew members being instructed to invite them backstage.
“And he [Leto] would talk to them in his dressing room. I couldn’t tell you what happened from there,” Brad tells the BBC.
Another man who worked with the band, whom we are calling Simon, says at one point there would typically be about two girls a day stopping by to see Leto at a house where the band was working.
Etta – not her real name – is one of the five women who tell the BBC they received strange and often very sexual phone calls from Leto. Four of them were teenagers at the time.
Sixteen-year-old Etta met Leto when she walked into a modelling agency in Los Angeles with her mother in 2014, she says.
The star took an interest in the teenager’s ambition to be a model, according to Etta, and asked for her email address, to invite them both to his Oscar party.
“He did email me and then very quickly it turns into this sexual thing on the phone,” she tells the documentary.
Leto knew she was 16 and asked her questions such as: “Are you a virgin? Do you have any kinks?” – and other more explicit questions, she recalls. “He did at least once mention him and I having sex at some point.”
Etta remembers feeling “nervous”, “anxious” and “uncomfortable”, but says she had a hard time putting up boundaries at that age and saying no.
She says Leto asked if he could pass her number to a friend of his, making it sound like the friend could be a good contact for her career – and she agreed.
Then that friend, who she knew as “Christian”, would call a lot and ask her to shoot porn, saying it did not matter if she was under age, says Etta.
Both “Christian” and Leto would ask similar, explicit questions, she says – adding she “would not be surprised” if they were the same person.
Two more of the five women who allege they received similar phone calls from Leto say they were also called by other men around the same time. Like Etta, they also believe the men could have been Leto playing characters.
Etta says she got a call from Leto in 2016 who told her his lawyer wanted to send her a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The lawyer had been concerned about his relationships with women, he said.
Etta says Leto “chuckled” at that, as if it were funny.
She did not sign the NDA, which the BBC has seen – alongside corresponding texts and email exchanges.
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