Armie Hammer, the Call Me By Your Name actor, is under police investigation after a woman accused him of raping her in 2017, according to a report in Deadline.
In a virtual press conference on Thursday, a woman named Effie claimed that the actor assaulted her in Los Angeles.
“On April 24, 2017, Armie Hammer violently raped me for over four hours in Los Angeles, during which he repeatedly slammed my head against a wall, bruising my face. He also committed other acts of violence against me to which I did not consent. For example, he beat my feet with a crop so they would hurt with every step I took for the next week. During those four hours I tried to get away, but he wouldn’t let me. I thought that he was going to kill me,” she said in the press conference.
The video of the press conference was loaded on YouTube by Fox11.
The woman said she met Hammer on Facebook in 2016 when she was 20 years old and entered into an on-and-off relationship between 2016 and 2020.
“He abused me mentally, emotionally, and sexually,” said Effie.
She said she was haunted by flashbacks so excruciating that she “contemplated suicide”.
“I thought that he was going to kill me,” the 24-year-old said during the press conference, which she attended along with her lawyer Gloria Allred.
According to Deadline, Andrew Brettler, Hammer’s lawyer, released a statement stating that Effie’s “correspondence with Mr Hammer undermines and refutes her outrageous allegations”. He said that the relationship was “completely consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance”.
This comes in the wake of allegations made against the actor in January by several other women who shared screenshots of messages he had allegedly sent them on social media, talking about graphic sexual fantasies ranging from cannibalism to rape.
Soon after, he announced that he was stepping down from the film, Shotgun Wedding.
Recommended
In a statement to Variety, the actor had said: “I’m not responding to these bulls— claims, but in light of the vicious and spurious online attacks against me, I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for four months to shoot a film in the Dominican Republic.”
On February 2, Hammer’s estranged wife Elizabeth Chambers had posted a lengthy statement on Instagram and said that she was “shocked, heartbroken, and devastated”.
Silverscreen India has reached out to Effie and a response from her side is awaited.