More than two years after it launched an investigation of actor Armie Hammer over sexual assault allegations, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said today the actor won’t be charged.
“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 for DA George Gascon, said in a statement today. “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.”
Los Angeles police launched an investigation in March 2021, just hours after explicit details were revealed in a virtual press conference by a woman claiming to have been assaulted by Call Me By Your Name actor in April 2017 while in a relationship with him. “He abused me mentally, emotionally and sexually,” said the woman named Effie, who did not want to give her surname. “I thought that he was going to kill me.”
The woman noted that she and the then-married Hammer were involved from 2016-20.
The SAG and Indie Spirit Awards nominee whose credits also include The Social Network, Rebecca and The Lone Ranger, lost some high-profile roles after news of the allegations broke. He was replaced in Starz’s Julia Roberts-Sean Penn Watergate series ‘Gaslit’, in Taiti Waititi’s Next Goal Wins and the Broadway production of The Minutes.
“We know that it is hard for women to report sexual assault,” Blacknell’s statement added. “Even when we cannot move forward with a prosecution, our victim service representatives will be available to those who seek our victim support services. 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.”
