Four women allege criminal sexual conduct by Jared Leto in a new BBC documentary

Warning:

This article contains allegations of sexual offences, grooming and explicit misconduct involving teenagers. Some readers may find the details distressing.

Four women have accused actor and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman Jared Leto of criminal sexual conduct in a new BBC documentary, with the alleged incidents said to have taken place when they were teenagers.

The claims appear in Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret, a BBC investigation featuring accounts from 10 women. Nine of them are speaking publicly about their experiences for the first time.

The Jared Leto allegations cover encounters said to have happened between 2002 and 2016, when the Oscar-winning actor was in his 30s and 40s. Leto is now 54.

One woman, identified in the documentary as Isabel, says she was 17 when she met Leto in Las Vegas in 2002. She says she agreed to meet him after showing him and his friends around the shop where she worked.

According to her account, the address she was given turned out to be a motel. Isabel alleges that Leto called her into a bathroom while he showered, kissed her, and forced her hand onto him. She says she pulled away and asked to leave.

Isabel says she blamed herself for years before later reassessing what she says happened.

Another woman, Alex, says she met Leto after a Thirty Seconds to Mars concert at London’s O2 Arena in 2013. She was 19 at the time. She claims she was invited to an after-party and later found herself alone with Leto in a dark hotel room.

Alex says her phone battery was dying, she felt drunk, and she asked whether she could sleep in the room. She alleges Leto responded with a threatening sexual remark. She says she left after realising she did not feel safe.

A third woman, Clara, alleges that she had sex with Leto in California when she was 17 and he was 34. The documentary notes that the age of consent in California is 18, meaning the allegation, if established, could fall under statutory rape law.

Clara says she remembered discussing the age of consent with Leto because her father worked in law enforcement. She claims Leto dismissed the concern. Looking back, she says she now views the encounter very differently from how she understood it as a teenager.

A fourth woman, named as Etta in the report, says she met Leto when she was 16 and interested in modelling. She alleges he began making sexually explicit phone calls to her and asked personal sexual questions.

Etta says she was later told that Leto’s lawyer wanted to send her a non-disclosure agreement because of concerns about his relationships with women. The BBC says it has seen the NDA, along with related messages and emails. Etta refused to sign it.

The documentary also includes accounts from four other women who say they received strange or sexual phone calls from Leto when they were younger. Another woman, Taylor, says she was 14 when Leto made a sexual comment about her body during an autograph signing and asked a security guard to take her backstage. Taylor says her mother challenged him at the time.

Two men who worked with Thirty Seconds to Mars also spoke to the BBC. They said staff felt uncomfortable about the way Leto interacted with teenage girls, including occasions when young women were allegedly invited backstage or to a house where the band was recording.

The BBC says it corroborated parts of several accounts with friends and family who were told about the alleged encounters at the time. It also says it reviewed pictures, messages and documents supporting parts of the women’s stories.

Leto has not responded to the allegations put to him by the BBC, despite repeated attempts to contact him, according to the report. He previously denied separate allegations of sexual impropriety published by Air Mail.