Hollywood star Armie Hammer accused of rape

The Los Angeles Police Department has opened an investigation into a woman's allegation that she had been sexually assaulted by actor Armie Hammer, it said on Thursday. The actor's Hollywood career has recently been derailed by allegations that he physically abused women.

The department said that it had been contacted on February 3rd by a lawyer representing "a female community member". After speaking with the woman, the department said, it began an investigation into Hammer by the Special Assault Section. "There is an open investigation in which he is a named suspect in an alleged sexual assault," Officer Norma Eisenman, a Los Angeles police spokeswoman, said. She declined to discuss the case in further detail.

The department disclosed the investigation after a woman alleged at an online news conference on Thursday that Hammer had raped her for more than four hours in Los Angeles on April 24th, 2017. She claimed Hammer had repeatedly slammed her head against a wall, bruising her face, and had beaten her feet with a crop.

Through tears at the news conference, which was organised by lawyer Gloria Allred, the woman, who is 24 and lives in Europe, alleged that "during those four hours, I tried to get away, but he wouldn't let me. I thought that he was going to kill me. He then left with no concern for my wellbeing. I was completely in shock and I couldn't believe that someone I loved did that to me."

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Hammer's lawyer, Andrew Brettler, said that the woman's "own correspondence with Mr Hammer undermines and refutes her outrageous allegations".

“From day one, Mr Hammer has maintained that all of his interactions” with the woman and with every other sexual partner “have been completely consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance, and mutually participatory,” Brettler said.

Hammer gained fame as an actor in films such as The Social Network in 2010, in which he played both Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, twin brothers who accused Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. In 2017 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 instalment of the Cars movie franchise.

In July 2020 Hammer's wife of 10 years, Elizabeth Chambers, a television personality, filed for divorce and Hammer's career seemed to implode amid allegations by two women that he had physically abused them. In early January, an anonymous account on Instagram published private messages, purportedly written by Hammer, that said, among other things, "I need to drink your blood" and "I am a 100 per cent cannibal". The comments circulated widely on social media.

Days later, Hammer dropped out of a film he was set to star in opposite Jennifer Lopez, and then pulled out of a Paramount+ series about the making 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 a former girlfriend. “These assertions about Mr Hammer are patently untrue,” the lawyer said in a statement issued in January to US magazine. “Any interactions with this person, or any partner of his, were completely consensual in that they were fully discussed, agreed upon and mutually participatory.”

At the news conference with Allred, the woman said she had met Hammer on Facebook in 2016 and their relationship had “progressed rapidly, and the emotions from both sides became really intense”.

“He would often test my devotion to him, slyly removing and crossing my boundaries, as he became increasingly more violent,” she alleged. “He abused me mentally, emotionally and sexually.” – New York Times