Allegations Include Motel Assault and Threats

One of the women said she was sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom when she was 17 — Another claims the Hollywood star threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19 and had been left alone with him in a hotel room. She said he repeated a lewd comment about her chest during an autograph-signing at a music festival when she was 14, according to the report.

Statutory Rape and Grooming Allegations

A third woman described having underage sex with Leto in California when she was 17, which would be classified as statutory rape. She said Leto “shrugged off” a conversation about the age of consent being 18 in the U.S. state. A fourth woman claimed Leto groomed her by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls when she was 16 and suggested they should have sex. She was sent a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) but refused to sign it.

Four additional women said they received strange and often sexual phone calls from Leto when they were younger. Another woman described how Leto instructed a security guard to take her backstage at a music festival after a lewd comment about her chest during an autograph-signing when she was 14. Her mother confronted him, but he allegedly repeated the comment.

10 Women Shared Stories in BBC Documentary

In total, 10 women spoke 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,” one of his alleged victims told the BBC. The BBC corroborated some accounts with friends and family who were told about the encounters at the time. In some cases, the BBC also saw pictures and messages that support the women’s claims.

Two men who worked with Leto’s band for many years told the documentary how uncomfortable they felt about the way Leto interacted with teenage girls. They said he sometimes invited them backstage or to the house where he was recording. “I think everyone thought the age gap was way too big,” one said.

Despite repeated attempts to contact Jared Leto, he has not responded to the allegations put to him by the BBC. 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 hit films such as “Fight Club,” “Blade Runner 2049,” “Suicide Squad,” and most recently, “Masters of the Universe.”

His award-winning rock band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, was formed in 1998 and is touring mainland Europe and the UK next spring, with concerts at the O2 London and Manchester’s Co-op Live arena. Allegations against Leto have lingered for decades. The BBC has counted more than 120 separate allegations made online relating to his behavior toward women, some of them historical.

Last year, allegations flared up again when a Los Angeles DJ named Allie Teilz posted on social media saying she had been assaulted by the actor when she was 17, prompting several other women to come forward with similar claims. Nine women last year also accused Leto of sexual impropriety in an article by U.S. media outlet Air Mail. He denied all the allegations.

In the BBC documentary, the four women who allege criminal behavior—Isabel, Alex, Clara, and Etta—describe in detail what they say happened to them in their encounters with the star. Isabel, now in her 40s, said she only recently stopped blaming herself for the sexual assault that she says took place in 2002, when she was 17. She said she agreed to meet Leto at his hotel after showing him and his friends around the Las Vegas store where she was working. The address she was given turned out to be a “dingy gross motel,” but she presumed they would be heading out somewhere else.

Isabel said 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 were many words exchanged, and he opened the shower curtain and started kissing me,” she told the documentary. He then grabbed her hand and used it to masturbate himself, she said. Taken by surprise, the then-teenager said 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 said, before letting her out of the room. It was only later, she said, when she looked up the actor online that she realized 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 modeling agencies to offer female models free VIP tickets, according to one ex-crew member the BBC is calling Brad. “That [request] was direct from Jared,” he said. 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 said 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 said. Alex was 19 at the time, but said to protect herself, she “felt the need” to pretend to be younger when she met Leto. She said 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 said 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 told the documentary. “Weren’t there supposed to be other people?” She said she then asked whether Leto had a phone charger or any cash, so she could get home, but that he said no to both. Out of options, Alex said 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 said 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 said—and it was then that she realized “I’m not safe” and left the room.

Alex said 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 said 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 told the BBC.

Brad, the former crew member, described 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 told the BBC. Another man who worked with the band, whom we are calling Simon, said 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.