March 19 (UPI) — The Los Angeles Police Department has opened an investigation into actor Armie Hammer after a woman reported that he sexually assaulted her.
The LAPD West Bureau’s sex crimes detectives took a report from a woman on Feb. 3 who said she was attacked by Hammer, department spokeswoman Norma Eisenman told the Los Angeles Times.
The announcement came a day after a woman, identified only as Effie, alleged in a news conference alongside her attorney Gloria Allred that Hammer “violently raped” her.
Eisenman said that she could not disclose further details about the report the LAPD received and did not confirm if it was filed by the same woman.
Effie, a 24-year-old from Europe, said Hammer raped her for four hours in Los Angeles on April 24, 2017.
“I tried to get away, but he wouldn’t let me. I thought that he was going to kill me,” she said. “He then left with no concern for my well-being. I was completely in shock and couldn’t believe someone I loved did that to me. I tried so hard to justify his actions, even to the point of responding to him in a way that did not reflect my true feelings.”
Allred said a woman has the right to withdraw consent “at any point” during a sexual encounter even if she has agreed to “certain sexual activity.”
“If she does withdraw her consent and asks her partner to stop for any reason, he is legally and morally obligated to stop. If he does not stop, he is then at risk of committing a crime against her,” said Allred.
Effie said she met Hammer on Facebook in 2016 and despite the fact he was married at the time their relationship “progressed rapidly and the emotions from both sides became really intense.”
She said they maintained an on-and-off “romantic and intimate relationship” from 2016 to 2020 during which Hammer “employed manipulation tactics” in order to exert control over her.
“He would often test my devotion to him, slyly removing and crossing my boundaries, as he became increasingly more violent,” she said. “He abused me mentally, emotionally and sexually.”
An attorney for Hammer denied the allegations and released a screenshot of a text conversation between the two in which Hammer appears to decline Effie’s request for sex, saying that her own “correspondence with Mr. Hammer undermines and refutes her outrageous allegations.”
“Mr. Hammer has maintained that all of his interactions with [Effie] — and every other sexual partner of his for that matter — have been completely consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance and mutually participatory.”
Earlier this year, Hammer exited multiple projects after he allegedly sent graphic messages to women over social media describing sexual fantasies, including cannibalism. He has denied the allegations.
