Oscar-winning actor and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto faces allegations of sexual assault, statutory rape and other sexual misconduct from four women who say the alleged offences took place when they were teenagers. The BBC documentary Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret also features accounts from six other women, bringing the total number of women who spoke to the programme to 10.
One woman 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, after being unexpectedly left alone with him in a hotel room. A third says she had under-age sex with him in California when she was 17, which would be classed as statutory rape. The fourth says Leto groomed her by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls when she was 16 and later sent her a non-disclosure agreement, which she refused to sign.
The BBC says it has corroborated a number of the women's accounts with friends and family who were told about the encounters at the time. In some cases, the BBC also says it has seen pictures and messages that support the women’s claims. Two men who worked with Leto's band for many years also told the documentary that staff felt uncomfortable about how he interacted with teenage girls, including inviting them backstage to his dressing room or to the house where he was recording.
Despite repeated attempts to contact Leto, he has not responded to the allegations put to him by the BBC. Allegations about his behaviour have circulated for decades, and the BBC says it has counted more than 120 separate allegations made online relating to his behaviour towards women, some of them historical.
Last year, the allegations resurfaced after Los Angeles DJ Allie Teilz posted on social media saying she had been assaulted by the actor when she was 17. That prompted several other women to come forward with similar claims. Nine women also accused Leto of sexual impropriety in an article by US media outlet Air Mail last year, and he denied all the allegations.
What do the women say happened in 2002?
Now in her 40s, Isabel, whose name has been changed, says she only recently stopped blaming herself for the sexual assault she says took place in 2002, when she was 17.
"Most of my life I had viewed this event as, I was a stupid girl… and so this bad thing happened."
Isabel says she agreed to meet Leto at his hotel after she had shown the actor and his friends around the Las Vegas store where she was working.
"dingy gross motel"
She says the address she was given turned out to be a
"dingy gross motel", but she believed they would be going out elsewhere. She says she was sitting on the bed waiting for Leto to get ready when he called her into the bathroom so they 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 says he then grabbed her hand and used it to masturbate himself. Taken by surprise, she says she pulled away and told him she wanted to leave. Leto then put on a towel, went outside and appeared to check who was around before letting her out of the room, she says.
It was only later, after looking up the actor online, that she says she realised he was in his 30s. Isabel says for years she blamed herself after Leto sexually assaulted her in 2002.
How did crew members describe the band's treatment of young women?
In the 2010s, Thirty Seconds to Mars was headlining major international arenas, and crew working with the band would call local modelling agencies to offer female models free VIP tickets, according to one former crew member, whom the BBC is calling Brad.
"That [request] was direct from Jared,"
He says there would be a backstage room for the models and describes being asked to request only females as
"a little bit uncomfortable".
Another man who worked with the band, whom the BBC is calling Simon, says there would typically be about two girls a day stopping by to see Leto at a house where the band was working.
What happened to Alex at the hotel room?
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 she felt the need to pretend to be younger when she met him.
"Age is just a number, and anyway, we're in Europe."
She says she told him she was 17, and that Leto, then 41, replied with those words. 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,"
"Weren't there supposed to be other people?"
She says she asked whether he had a phone charger or any cash so she could get home, but Leto said no to both. Out of options, she considered whether she might sleep on the chaise longue in the room. But when she asked 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".
She says he repeated this response several times, 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, and her friend replied:
"He was threatening sexual assault, you should report him,"
For a long time, Alex says she tried to dismiss what happened, but she now believes the hotel encounter had been
"all planned out". She says,
"The assistant knew what to say, to lure me into his hotel room,"
What does Clara allege?
Clara alleges that she first had sex with Leto when she was 17 and he was 34, at his house in California. She says she was approached on his behalf by an associate of Leto's in his 40s who got her phone number while backstage at a Thirty Seconds to Mars gig in 2006.
"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',"
Clara says she was
"so naive and vulnerable"at that age and did not understand how
"normal"this kind of behaviour was in an adult relationship. She says it was only later that she realised how frightening it was.
Clara says she remembers discussing the age of consent in California with Leto because her father worked in law enforcement. She says he
"just kind of shrugged it off, like it wasn't a huge concern for him".
She says they went back to Leto's house and had sex while her friend waited in another room. She says this was the first of three or four visits to his home.
If an adult has sex with someone below the age of consent in California it can constitute the criminal offence of statutory rape and lead to prison time. Clara says,
"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."
What does Taylor say happened at the festival?
Another woman says an encounter with Leto at a music festival when she was 14 stopped her from going to concerts altogether. Taylor says she met Leto with her mother in 2005 after watching Thirty Seconds to Mars perform.
The band had offered to meet fans and sign autographs, and she held out the T-shirt she was wearing for Leto to sign, she explains. Instead, she says, he signed across her breasts and told her
"you have a nice rack".
"He was asking his bodyguard to go ahead and take me backstage, he didn't even ask me if I wanted to go,"
She says it would have been
"very obvious"she was a teenager because she was very short and wore braces on her teeth at the time. Taylor says her mother witnessed what happened and confronted Leto.
"He looked at her and said 'it's still a nice rack'. He just did not care,"
Taylor says the encounter
"really altered my life… there was nothing I could do about what happened to me."
What are the claims about phone calls?
Etta, whose name has been changed, is one of five women who told the BBC they received strange and often very sexual phone calls from Leto. Four of them were teenagers at the time.
Etta says she met Leto when she walked into a modelling agency in Los Angeles with her mother in 2014, when she was 16. According to Etta, the star took an interest in her ambition to become a model and asked for her email address so he could 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 says Leto knew she was 16 and asked questions such as
"Are you a virgin? Do you have any kinks?"and other more explicit questions. She recalls him mentioning at least once that he and she might have sex at some point.
Etta says she felt
"nervous",
"anxious"and
"uncomfortable", but says she found it difficult to set boundaries and say no at that age.
She says Leto asked if he could pass her number to a friend, saying the friend could be a good contact for her career, and she agreed. That friend, whom she knew as
"Christian", then began calling her a lot and asking her to shoot porn, saying it did not matter if she was under age, she says.
Both
"Christian"and Leto would ask similar explicit questions, she says, adding she
"would not be surprised"if they were the same person. Two other women who described similar phone calls say they were also contacted by other men around the same time, and like Etta they believe those men could have been Leto using characters.
Etta says she got a call from Leto in 2016 in which he told her his lawyer wanted to send her a non-disclosure agreement because the lawyer had been concerned about his relationships with women. She says Leto
"chuckled"at that, as if it were funny.
She did not sign the NDA, which the BBC says it has seen alongside corresponding texts and email exchanges.
What else has been said publicly?
The BBC documentary says nine of the 10 women shared their stories publicly for the first time. It also notes that all the women say they encountered Leto between 2002 and 2016, when he was in his 30s and 40s. He is now 54.
Leto has been a prominent actor since the 1990s and won the 2014 Academy Award for best supporting actor for Dallas Buyers Club. He has appeared in films including Fight Club, Blade Runner 2049, Suicide Squad and, most recently, Masters of the Universe.
As well as acting, Leto is the frontman for the award-winning band Thirty Seconds to Mars, which was formed in 1998 and is touring mainland Europe and the UK next spring, with concerts at the O2 in London and Manchester's Co-op Live arena.
If you are affected by any of the issues in this story, help and support is available at BBC Action Line.
