The Los Angeles Police Department said on Thursday that it opened an investigation into a woman’s claim to have been sexually abused by actor Armie Hammer, whose Hollywood career was recently hampered by accusations that he physically abused women.
The department said it was contacted on February 3 by a lawyer representing “a woman from the community”. After speaking with the woman, the department said, it launched an investigation into Mr. Hammer by the Special Attack Section.
“There is an open investigation in which he is suspected of alleged sexual assault,” said police officer Norma Eisenman, a Los Angeles police spokesman. She declined to discuss the case in more detail.
The department released the investigation after a woman said at an online news conference on Thursday that Hammer had raped her for more than four hours in Los Angeles on April 24, 2017. She said Hammer had repeatedly hit his head against the wall. , hurting his face and hitting his feet with a whip.
“During those four hours, I tried to escape, but he wouldn’t let me,” said the 24-year-old woman who lives in Europe, in tears at a press conference organized by lawyer Gloria Allred. “I thought he was going to kill me. He then left without worrying about my well-being. I was completely in shock and couldn’t believe that someone I loved did this to me. “
Mr. Hammer’s lawyer, Andrew B. Brettler, said that “the woman’s own correspondence with Mr. Hammer undermines and refutes her outrageous accusations”.
“From the first day, Mr. Hammer stated that all of his interactions” with the woman and with all other sexual partners “were completely consensual, discussed and agreed in advance and mutually participatory,” said Brettler.
Hammer gained fame as an actor in films like “The Social Network” in 2010, in which he played Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, twin brothers who accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea.
In 2017, Mr. Hammer starred in the dramatic film “Call Me by Your Name”, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor, and voiced a character in the third installment of the “Cars” film franchise.
In July 2020, Hammer’s 10-year-old wife Elizabeth Chambers, a television personality, filed for divorce, and Hammer’s career seemed to implode amid accusations by two women that he had physically abused them.
In early January, an anonymous Instagram account published private messages allegedly written by Mr. Hammer, in which he said, among other things, “I need to drink your blood” and “I am a 100% cannibal”. Comments circulated widely on social media.
Days later, Mr. Hammer gave up on a film that would star opposite Jennifer Lopez and then left a Paramount + series about the production of the film “The Godfather”.
A lawyer for Hammer on Thursday night referred to an earlier statement he had made denying allegations that he had physically abused an ex-girlfriend.
“These statements about Mr. Hammer are patently false,” said the lawyer in a statement released in January by the American magazine. “Any interactions with that person, or any partner of yours, were completely consensual, as they were fully discussed, agreed upon and mutually participatory.”
At the press conference with Ms. Allred, the woman said that she met Mr. Hammer on Facebook in 2016 and that their relationship “progressed quickly and the emotions on both sides became really intense”.
“He used to test my devotion to him, shrewdly removing and crossing my boundaries, as he became more and more violent,” she said. “He abused me mentally, emotionally and sexually.”