BBC documentary accuses Jared Leto of assaulting four children (with receipts)
As far as I'm aware, this is the first time a mainstream media outlet has aired the numerous allegations of sexual assault that Leto has faced for years
Important to note that Leto wasn't just accidentally having sex with children as part of his wider sexual adventures
Leto was specifically targeting tiny girls who looked very young
In total, 10 women have spoken to the BBC documentary - Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret - with nine of them sharing their stories publicly for the first time.
The BBC has corroborated a number of the women's accounts with friends and family who were told about the encounters with Leto at the time. In some cases, we have also seen pictures and messages that support the women's accounts.
Despite repeated attempts to contact Jared Leto, he has not responded to the allegations put to him by the BBC.
Allegations against Leto have lingered for decades. The BBC has counted more than 120 separate allegations made online relating to his behaviour towards women, some of them historical.
Last year, allegations flared up again when a Los Angeles DJ named Allie Teilz posted on social media saying she had been assaulted by the actor when she was 17, prompting several other women to come forward with similar claims.
Nine women last year also accused Leto of sexual impropriety, external in an article by US media outlet Air Mail. He denied all the allegations.
In the BBC documentary, the four women who allege criminal behaviour - Isabel, Alex, Clara and Etta - describe in detail what they say happened to them in their encounters with the star.
Now in her 40s, Isabel (not her real name) says she only recently stopped blaming herself for the sexual assault that she says took place in 2002, when she was 17.
"Most of my life I had viewed this event as, I was a stupid girl… and so this bad thing happened."
Isabel says she agreed to meet Leto at his hotel after she had shown the actor and his friends around the Las Vegas store where she was working.
Isabel says she was sitting on the bed waiting for Leto to get ready, when he called her into the bathroom so the pair could talk while he showered.
"I don't think there was many words exchanged and he opened the shower curtain and started kissing me," she tells the documentary.
He then grabbed her hand and used it to masturbate himself, she says.
Taken by surprise, the then-teenager says she pulled away and told him she wanted to leave.
Putting on a towel, Leto went outside and appeared to check who was around, she says, before letting her out of the room.
A woman we are calling Clara alleges that she first had sex with Leto when she was 17 - and he was aged 34 - at his house in California.
"He told me, 'I would like you to call me daddy'. And it was either pretend to be a little girl or 'my little girl'," she tells the BBC.
Clara says she was "so naive and vulnerable" at that age and had no sense of how "normal" this kind of behaviour was in an adult relationship.
"It was only as time went on that I realised more and more how scary that really was," she says.
An associate of Leto's in his 40s had approached her on the musician's behalf and got her phone number, she says, while backstage at a Thirty Seconds to Mars gig in 2006.
Clara says she remembers having a conversation about the age of consent in California with Leto, because her father worked in law enforcement at the time.
"He [Leto] just kind of shrugged it off, like it wasn't a huge concern for him," she says.
They went back to Leto's house, she says, and had sex while her friend waited in another room. It was the first of three or four visits to Leto's home, according to Clara.
If an adult has sex with someone below the age of consent in California it can constitute the criminal offence of statutory rape and lead to prison time.
Sixteen-year-old Etta met Leto when she walked into a modelling agency in Los Angeles with her mother in 2014, she says.
The star took an interest in the teenager's ambition to be a model, according to Etta, and asked for her email address, to invite them both to his Oscar party.
"He did email me and then very quickly it turns into this sexual thing on the phone," she tells the documentary.
Leto knew she was 16 and asked her questions such as: "Are you a virgin? Do you have any kinks?" - and other more explicit questions, she recalls. "He did at least once mention him and I having sex at some point."
Etta remembers feeling "nervous", "anxious" and "uncomfortable", but says she had a hard time putting up boundaries at that age and saying no.
She says Leto asked if he could pass her number to a friend of his, making it sound like the friend could be a good contact for her career - and she agreed.
Then that friend, who she knew as "Christian", would call a lot and ask her to shoot porn, saying it did not matter if she was under age, says Etta.
Both "Christian" and Leto would ask similar, explicit questions, she says - adding she "would not be surprised" if they were the same person.
Two more of the five women who allege they received similar phone calls from Leto say they were also called by other men around the same time. Like Etta, they also believe the men could have been Leto playing characters.
Etta says she got a call from Leto in 2016 who told her his lawyer wanted to send her a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). The lawyer had been concerned about his relationships with women, he said.
Etta says Leto "chuckled" at that, as if it were funny.
She did not sign the NDA, which the BBC has seen - alongside corresponding texts and email exchanges.
Posted Jul 29, 2026, 6:57 AM UTC