Four women accuse actor and musician Jared Leto of sexual offenses

Oscar-winning actor and musician Jared Leto has been accused by four women of various sexual offenses.

According to the BBC documentary, Jared Leto: The Dark Secret of Hollywood, currently airing on the BBC iPlayer platform, the alleged offenses took place when the women were teenagers.

One of the women claims she was sexually assaulted in a hotel bathroom when she was 17 years old by the actor and leader of Thirty Seconds To Mars, while another alleges that the star threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19 and unexpectedly alone with him in a hotel room.

A third woman described how she had sexual relations with the star while underage in California when she was 17, which would classify as statutory rape, and claims that Leto "respected" a conversation about the age of consent being 18 in that U.S. state.

Another woman also alleged that she was a victim of manipulation by Leto, claiming that he abused his celebrity status by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls to her when she was 16. According to the BBC, she was later sent a non-disclosure agreement to prevent her from speaking about her relationship with Leto, which she refused to sign.

In total, ten women spoke in the BBC documentary, nine of whom shared their stories publicly for the first time, stating that they met Leto between 2002 and 2016. Four of them claimed to have received strange and often sexually explicit phone calls from him when they were younger.

Another woman alleged that when she was 14, Leto ordered a security guard to take her backstage at a music festival after making an obscene comment about her chest during a signing session. The young woman's mother confronted Leto, but he allegedly repeated the comment.

The BBC claims to have corroborated several of the women's testimonies with friends and family who were informed about the encounters with Leto at the time, and the corporation says it has also seen photographs and messages that support the women's accounts.

Two men who worked with his band also recounted in the documentary how uncomfortable the staff felt about the way Leto allegedly interacted with teenage girls, sometimes inviting them to the dressing room or to the house where he was recording.

The BBC states that despite repeated attempts to contact Leto, he has not responded to the allegations made by the network.

This comes just over a year after the singer and actor was accused of inappropriate sexual conduct by nine women, allegations that the singer's representatives denied at the time.

In a report published by Air Mail last June, several women accused Leto of inappropriate behavior. The allegations date back to the early 2000s, with one woman stating that it was "common knowledge" that he sent text messages with sexual comments to teenage models.

The accusations against the Thirty Seconds To Mars singer and Hollywood actor emerged the previous month when DJ Allie Teilz, a resident of Los Angeles, shared an old Facebook post of hers from 2012 on her Instagram story.

"You’re not really in Los Angeles until Jared Leto tries to assault you backstage... in a kilt... and a snow hat," she wrote. "I was assaulted and traumatized by this guy when I was 17 years old", she added in another story. "He knew my age and didn’t care. What he did was predatory, scary, and unacceptable."

A representative for Leto "expressly denied" the multiple allegations collected in the Air Mail report, including those from Teilz, and stated that the allegations were "manifestly false."

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