By: Sung Hae -Media Reporter PUBLISHED: MARCH 31, 2022
Jared Leto has a history of being called out not only by women, but also by celebrities in the past: In 2018, Dylan Sprouse accused Leto of predatory behavior online, asking, “now that you’ve slid into the dm’s of every female model aged 18-25, what would you say your success rate is?” In a since-deleted tweet, director James Gunn reportedly responded, “He starts at 18 on the Internet?” according to Screenshot Media.
Accusations against Leto stretch back to the early 2000s, however. In 2005, an anonymous source told the New York Post that Leto allegedly has an affinity for younger women and would often text underage girls. “He’s a serial texter. He is constantly texting these 16- and 17-year-old girls. It’s really kind of creepy,” the source said.
In a since-deleted message board about rape allegations against Leto specifically, an anonymous source alleged Leto molested her, according to Kulture Hub. In their claim, the woman noted that she was only 17 at the time. She wrote: “I think he got pleasure out of hurting me, in retrospect, but I was too young and didn’t know that then.” This woman’s story is only one of many accusations against Leto. In 2013, another user published a post about their experience with Leto. In her post, the woman accused Leto of pedophilia. "I met Jared Leto when I was 17 (a naive innocent girl) on one of his movie sets in Brooklyn, when he was turning 34,” She detailed how she would often meet Leto at hotels near Gramercy Park in New York. The user claimed that Leto told her to verbally tell him that she was 14 or 15. The commenter added, “He was very pushy into coercing me to do sexual acts with him and he was quite rough and forceful.”
Gizmodo reported that Leto attempted to debunk rumors that he gifted used condoms to his Suicide Squad co-stars. Despite the fact that Leto himself said that he gave used condoms to his fellow cast members, Leto told Entertainment Weekly that his previous statements were a joke. He and the rest of Thirty Seconds To Mars also made headlines in 2019 for allegedly starting a cult called the Echelon, though he later told the New York Times that he was joking.
The Guardian reports that survivors of sexual coercion are often oblivious to this crime because of normalized power dynamics that explain coercion away as a misunderstanding, which can severely alter a person’s relationship with sex itself. Beyond these latent emotional and mental effects, sexual coercion infringes on a person’s consent and trust.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.
California/ Jared Leto/ News