Air Mail has published a report featuring nine women accusing Suicide Squad and Morbius star Jared Leto of sexual misconduct. Some allege that they were underage when the Oscar-winning 30 Seconds to Mars frontman engaged in sexually charged conversations or made forceful advances on them.
You may recall that rumours about Leto's alleged behaviour toward young and underage women date back to at least 2005. At the time, the New York Post published a story that started with "Jared Leto likes 'em young," claiming he'd been caught propositioning teen models at the Maritime Hotel.
Long before he boarded the MCU to helm Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel Studios, DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn took to social media to share several risqué comments about Leto's supposed interest in younger women, suggesting it was a well-known secret in Hollywood.
We'd strongly recommend heading to Air Mail to read this story in its entirety. For now, here are some relevant excerpts (there are some disturbing allegations here that some of you might want to scroll past):
"[The] women I spoke to say Leto’s alleged past behavior was not a phase but rather part of a long-standing pattern—one that was and continues to be widely known in some circles and, generally, quietly accepted. 'It’s been an open secret for a long time,' one of the women tells me."
Still, over the next three weeks, the calls kept coming. 'Always at one, two, three A.M.,' [a woman who was 16 at the time] remembers. 'And the conversations turned sexual. He’d ask things like, 'Have you ever had a boyfriend? Have you ever sucked a dick?'"
"Flattered by the star’s attention, [Laura] La Rue says, she continued to visit Leto sporadically over the next few months. On one occasion, she alleges, he walked out of a room completely naked. 'He just walked out, dick out, like it was normal,' she says. La Rue didn’t know what to think—she was 17 when the incident took place. 'I thought maybe this was just what adult men do,' she says."
"Another woman I spoke to, an actress who began a texting relationship with Leto when she was still under-age, described how visits to his house could quickly turn uncomfortable. She recalls him saying things like 'Do any of the little boys you hang out with f*** you?'"
"When she was 18, the woman says, his sexual overtures escalated. She describes an incident during one visit to Leto’s home when 'he suddenly pulled his penis out and started masturbating. Then he walked over, grabbed my hand, and put it on him. He leaned in and said, 'I want you to spit on it.'"
An unnamed representative for Leto said, "All of the allegations are expressly denied," and similarly denied that the incidents above took place as described. The actor himself has not said anything directly in response to the article.
The timing of this story will have likely caused Disney a headache as the studio is gearing up to start promoting this October's Tron: Ares. Leto is the movie's lead star and has been front and centre in almost all of the marketing thus far.
Last month, Los Angeles-based DJ Allie Teilz alleged that she was "assaulted and traumatized by this creep when I was 17," and added, "the sheer volume of these cases—and how young some of these girls were, just 14, 15, 16—breaks my heart."
That didn't receive much in the way of coverage at the time, but appears to have opened the floodgates, leading to this fresh wave of allegations.