The British public broadcaster BBC has published an investigation in which four women accuse actor and musician Jared Leto of alleged sexual offenses that occurred when they were minors. The allegations are part of the documentary Jared Leto: The Dark Secret of Hollywood, in which ten women participate, nine of whom publicly recount their experiences with the Oscar-winning best supporting actor for the first time.
The investigation places the alleged events between 2002 and 2016, a period during which, according to the collected testimonies, the complainants met the actor. The BBC claims to have corroborated part of the accounts through documents, messages, and conversations with people close to the women.
Four women recount alleged sexual offenses
According to the documentary, one of the complainants claims that "she was sexually assaulted" by Jared Leto when she was 17 years old in the bathroom of a motel. Another states that the actor "threatened to sexually assault her" when she was 19 after being left alone with her in a hotel room.
A third woman claims to have had sexual relations with the actor when she was 17 years old in California. The BBC reminds that the age of consent in that state is 18 years, so the described events could allegedly constitute a statutory rape offense, a matter that has not been subject to a judicial resolution.
The fourth complainant asserts that Jared Leto "manipulated her" when she was 16 years old and that he would have used his position as a celebrity to maintain phone conversations of explicit sexual content. According to her account, in one of those calls "he proposed having sexual relations". The woman also claims that she later received a confidentiality agreement to prevent her from speaking about the relationship, a document that the BBC claims to have examined and which she ultimately did not sign.
The documentary includes more testimonies about alleged inappropriate behavior
The BBC's investigation also incorporates the testimonies of five other women.
Four of them claim to have received explicit sexual content phone calls when they were young. Another participant recounts that, at 14 years old, Jared Leto allegedly made an obscene comment about her chest during a signing session and later asked a security member to accompany her to the backstage of a music festival. According to her account, her mother reprimanded the actor for what happened and he would have repeated the comment.
The ten women claim to have met the artist between 2002 and 2016, when Jared Leto was between 30 and 40 years old. Currently, the actor is 54 years old.
The BBC claims to have verified part of the accusations
The British network maintains that several of the testimonies were corroborated through conversations with family and friends to whom the complainants would have told the events at the time they occurred.
It also claims to have had access to photographs, messages, and other documents that, according to the investigation, would support some of the accounts included in the documentary.
The BBC also includes the testimony of two former workers of the band Thirty Seconds to Mars, who claim that part of the crew showed discomfort with the relationship the artist maintained with some teenagers. According to their statements, Jared Leto would occasionally invite them to the dressing room or to the house where he was recording. One of them states in the documentary that "we all thought the age difference was too big".
Jared Leto has not responded to the accusations
The BBC claims that it contacted Jared Leto several times to know his version before publishing the investigation. However, according to the network, the actor did not respond to the accusations made in the documentary.
So far, there is no judicial conviction against Jared Leto in relation to these events. The accusations collected in the investigation correspond to the testimonies of the complainants and the documentation compiled by the BBC, without there being a judicial resolution that determines the criminal responsibility of the actor.