Armie Hammer’s rape case dropped after review finds ‘insufficient evidence’
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Actor Armie Hammer will not be charged with sexual assault due to a lack of evidence, prosecutors have confirmed.
The Social Network star was accused two years ago of raping a woman in Los Angeles in 2017 and faced allegations of sending a series of explicit messages via social media.
Mr Hammer, known for films including Call Me By Your Name, Hotel Mumbai and Death on the Nile, said he was “very grateful” to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for their decision.
He said he was looking forward to “beginning what will be a long, difficult process of putting my life back together now that my name is cleared”.
Prosecutors said they conducted an “extremely thorough review” but had “insufficient evidence” to charge Mr Hammer.
“Sexual assault cases are often difficult to prove, which is why we assign our most experienced prosecutors to review them,” Tiffiny Blacknell, director of the bureau of communications, said.
“In this case, those prosecutors conducted an extremely thorough review, but determined that at this time, there is insufficient evidence to charge Mr Hammer with a crime.
“As prosecutors, we have an ethical responsibility to only charge cases that we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt … Due to the complexity of the relationship and inability to prove a non-consensual, forcible sexual encounter, we are unable to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The accuser, known as Effie, claimed that Mr Hammer raped her in 2017 and had subjected her to abuse on other occasions.
“I thought he was going to kill me,” she told reporters.
They had been in an on-and-off relationship for four years, according to reports.
The accusations coincided with numerous claims that Mr Hammer had engaged in BDSM activities with other women who accused him of often taken things too far.
Mr Hammer maintained that the relationships were consensual but has admitted that he behaved like “an a--hole” and the “power dynamics were off”.
“Every single thing was discussed beforehand,” he told Air Mail during an interview. “I have never thrust this on someone unexpectedly. Never.”
He spoke out about the allegations earlier this year for the first time, saying that he considered taking his own life and revealing that he was sexually abused as a teenager.
The father of two was dropped by his agency and his role opposite Jennifer Lopez in the action comedy Shotgun Wedding was recast.
‘Like dating Hannibal Lecter’
Screenshots of messages between Mr Hammer and various women were shared online. The alleged conversations included rape fantasies, the desire to inflict pain on his partners, and one where he said he was “100% a cannibal”.
Courtney Vucekovich, who dated Mr Hammer in 2020, said that being with him was “like dating Hannibal Lecter”.
She claimed that “he likes the idea of skin in his teeth” and wanted her to remove a rib so he could eat it.
“He said to me, he wants to break my rib and barbecue and eat it,” Ms Vucekovich told Page Six.
“F---, that was weird, but you never think about it again. He says, ‘I want to take a bite out of you.’ If I had a little cut on my hand, he’d, like, suck it or lick it. That’s about as weird as we got.”
Model Paige Lorenze also claimed that Mr Hammer spoke about eating her rib.
“He was telling me you can remove the bottom ribs so he could smoke them, cook them and eat them. He kept saying: ‘You don’t need them’,” she told Star Magazine.
Ms Lorenze claimed that Mr Hammer carved the letter “A”, his initial, into the skin above her pubic bone with a knife.
“You can still see it. It was extremely painful and traumatising. He told me that he bragged about it to his friends,” she said.
