Four women accuse Jared Leto of criminal sexual conduct when they were teenagers

Warning: Contains graphic details of alleged intersexual offences and misconduct, arsenic good arsenic beardown language Four women have accused Oscar‑winning actor and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto of criminal sexual conduct that allegedly took place when they were teenagers. One accuser states she was sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom when she was 17. Another says the Hollywood star threatened her with sexual battery when she was 19 and that she found herself unexpectedly alone with him in a hotel room. A third woman describes having under‑age sexual contact with Leto in California while she was 17, an act that would constitute statutory rape under state law. She recounts that Leto “shrugged off” a conversation about the age of consent being 18 in the jurisdiction. The fourth accuser says Leto groomed her, exploiting his celebrity status by placing repeated sexually explicit phone calls to her when she was 16. On at least one occasion, he allegedly suggested they should have sex. She later received a non‑disclosure statement (NDA) intended to bar her from discussing the relationship; the BBC has viewed the document, but she declined to sign it. Four additional women report receiving unusual and often explicit sexual phone calls from Leto during their younger years. Another woman recalls that, at age 14, Leto directed a security guard to escort her backstage at a music festival after he had made a lewd comment about her chest during an autograph session. Her parent confronted Leto, who, according to the allegation, repeated the remark. In total, ten women have spoken to the BBC documentary *Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret* (Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret), with nine sharing their experiences publicly for the first time. All of the interviewees say they encountered Leto between 2002 and 2016, a period when he was in his thirties and forties; he is now 54. One of the alleged victims remarks, “This was 25 years ago… he has gotten away with it.” The BBC has corroborated several of the women’s accounts through friends and family who were informed of the incidents at the time. In some instances, photographs and messages supporting the claims have been reviewed. Two longtime members of Leto’s band told the documentary that staff often felt uncomfortable with the manner in which Leto interacted with teenage girls, noting that he sometimes invited them backstage to his dressing room or to the location where he was recording. One of them observed, “I think everyone thought the age gap was way too big.” Despite repeated attempts to contact Jared Leto, he has not responded to the allegations presented to him by the BBC.