A BBC documentary airing this week features ten women accusing Oscar-winning actor Jared Leto of sexual misconduct spanning more than a decade, with alleged victims ranging in age from 14 to 19. Four of those women allege criminal conduct, including what would be classified as statutory rape under California law. Leto has not responded to a single one of the allegations put to him by the BBC.
What the Women Are Actually Saying
The documentary, titled Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret, features accounts from women who say they encountered Leto between 2002 and 2016, when he was in his 30s and 40s. He is 54 now. Nine of the ten women are sharing their stories publicly for the first time.
The BBC corroborated multiple accounts with friends and family who were told about the encounters at the time. In several cases, pictures and messages also supported the women's stories. This is not a pile of anonymous internet claims. This is sourced, documented journalism.
The allegations break down like this: one woman says Leto sexually assaulted her in a motel bathroom when she was 17. Another says he threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19, after she was left alone with him in a hotel room. A third says she had sex with Leto in California when she was 17, which is statutory rape under state law, and that he brushed off any mention of the age of consent. A fourth says he spent years making sexually explicit phone calls to her starting when she was 16, and that she was subsequently sent a non-disclosure agreement she refused to sign. The BBC has seen that NDA.
The 14-Year-Old, the Security Guard, and the Mother Who Had to Say Something
Then there is the account that stops you cold. A woman says that when she was 14 years old, at a music festival, Leto made a lewd comment about her chest during an autograph signing. He then had a security guard escort her backstage.
Her mother was there. The mother confronted Leto directly. According to the BBC's reporting, he repeated the comment.
Let that sit for a second. A grown man was told by a mother that his comment about her 14-year-old daughter's body was unacceptable. And he said it again.
The Model Pipeline Nobody Wants to Talk About
The documentary also details a system that former crew members describe as deliberate and organized. According to an ex-crew member the BBC identifies as Brad, staff for Thirty Seconds to Mars would contact local modeling agencies during tours and offer female models free VIP tickets. Brad says the request came directly from Leto, and that being asked to specify only females made him uncomfortable.
One former model, identified as Alex, says her agency was invited to the band's 2013 show at London's O2 arena. Leto's female assistant then invited her to an after-party at Shoreditch House.
This is not a story about a single incident of alleged bad behavior. Two men who worked with the band for years both told the documentary that staff were regularly uncomfortable with the way Leto interacted with teenage girls, including inviting them backstage to his dressing room and to the house where he was recording. "I think everyone thought the age gap was way too big," one of them said. Everyone. Not one concerned person. Everyone.
One Hundred and Twenty Allegations and Counting
Here is the number that deserves a full stop and some silence: 120. The BBC says it has counted more than 120 separate allegations made online relating to Leto's behavior toward women, some of them historical.
This is not new, either. Allegations have circulated around Leto for decades. Last year, Los Angeles DJ Allie Teilz posted on social media saying she had been assaulted by Leto when she was 17. Several other women came forward shortly after. A separate piece by Air Mail featured nine women accusing Leto of sexual impropriety. He denied those allegations.
Denied them. And then did not respond at all to the far more specific and documented allegations the BBC put to him for this documentary. His silence in the face of this reporting is not nothing. It is a choice.
Who Jared Leto Is, For Anyone Who Forgot
Leto won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2014 for Dallas Buyers Club. He has appeared in Fight Club, Blade Runner 2049, Suicide Squad, and most recently in Masters of the Universe. He is, by any measure, one of the more recognizable faces in Hollywood.
His band, Thirty Seconds to Mars, formed in 1998 and is currently scheduled to tour the UK and mainland Europe next spring, with dates at the O2 in London and Manchester's Co-op Live. Tickets are presumably still on sale.
One of the women speaking in the documentary puts it simply and devastatingly. "This was 25 years ago," she says. "He has gotten away with it."
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to look at 120 online allegations spanning two decades, a corroborated BBC investigation, four criminal-conduct accusations, an NDA sent to a 16-year-old, and a man who repeated a lewd comment about a 14-year-old to her mother's face, and conclude this is a pattern that somehow went unaddressed by an entire industry. It did not go unnoticed. His own crew members noticed. They were uncomfortable. They kept working.
That is what Hollywood actually runs on. Not just the predators, but the collective agreement among the people around them to find it a little bit uncomfortable and then move on to the next tour stop. The agencies took the calls. The assistants sent the invitations. The modeling agencies sent the women. Everyone knew the assignment and nobody said it out loud.
Leto has not responded to the BBC's allegations. His UK and European tour dates are still listed. The O2 show is still on the calendar. And somewhere, a publicist is probably drafting a statement about how much he respects women and looks forward to seeing fans in the spring. The industry will wait and see how the numbers look. That is the actual dark secret. Not Leto specifically. The machine that kept him in business for twenty-five years while everyone thought the age gap was way too big and did the job anyway.
