The Hollywood actor Armie Hammer is being investigated for sexual assault allegations, said Los Angeles Police on Thursday.
Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) spokesman Officer Drake Madison said the incident of sexual assault was reported on February 3 in which actor Hammer was prime suspect. LAPD would give no further details on the incident or who made the report.
At a video news conference on Thursday, a woman said that on April 24, 2017, in Los Angeles, Hammer raped her for four hours, slammed her head against a wall and committed other violent acts against her.
The woman appeared on camera but identified herself only by her first name, Effie.
Effie said,
“During those four hours I tried to get away but he wouldn’t let me,” she said through tears. “I thought that he was going to kill me. He then left with no concern for my well-being.”
Hammer’s attorney denied the allegations.
The woman’s attorney, Gloria Allred, said they had given evidence to Los Angeles police, including photos of Effie’s injuries. Allred declined to say when they made the report, and would not confirm that it was the one made in February that the LAPD is investigating.
Effie was 20 when she and Hammer met on Facebook and began a relationship in 2016, and they had their last contact last year, Allred said.
Hammer’s attorney said in a statement that from the beginning he has maintained that all of his interactions with Effie and every other sexual partner “have been completely consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance, and mutually participatory.
The statement called her allegations “attention seeking and ill-advised” and said “her own correspondence with Mr Hammer undermines and refutes her outrageous allegations.”
The statement included a screenshot that Hammer’s attorney, Brettler, said was a text message exchange in July of last year between Hammer and Effie, in which she expresses a desire for rough, forceful sex with him, and he responds by saying he no longer wants a relationship with her.
Hammer was married at the time to television personality Elizabeth Chambers. They divorced last year.
Allegations of sexual violence in recent months have derailed Hammer’s career.
Earlier this year, an Instagram account began posting screenshots of text messages allegedly from Hammer as far back as 2016. Allred would not comment on whether her client was behind that account, @houseofeffie. When those text messages began appearing in media reports, Hammer called them “vicious and spurious online attacks against me.”
After those texts were published, Hammer departed the comedy Shotgun Wedding, in which he was to star alongside Jennifer Lopez, shortly before production was to begin. He soon after departed the Paramount+ series The Offer, about the making of The Godfather.
Hammer was also dropped by his agency, WME.
