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.
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, featured in 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 behaviour towards 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 US media outlet Air Mail. He denied all the allegations.
‘Dingy gross motel’
In the BBC documentary, the four women who allege criminal behaviour - Isabel, Alex, Clara and Etta - describe in detail what they say happened to them in their encounters with the star.
Source: BBC
– Agencies
