2023-06-01 04:13:36
“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 a statement. “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.”
Hammer’s attorney has denied the allegation.
The actor returned to Instagram following the announcement, writing that his “name is cleared.”
“I am very grateful to the District Attorney for conducting a thorough investigation and coming to the conclusion that I have stood by this entire time, that no crime was committed,” Hammer said in a statement on his Instagram account. “I look forward to beginning what will be a long, difficult process of putting my life back together now that my name is cleared.”
Hammer was the main suspect in a sexual assault that was reported to police on Feb. 3, 2012, LAPD spokesman Officer Drake Madison said in March of that year. Police would gave no further details on the incident or who made the report.
“As prosecutors, we have an ethical responsibility to only charge cases that we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” Blacknell said. “We know that it is hard for women to report sexual assault. 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.”
On March 18, 2021, at a video news conference, a woman said that on April 24, 2017, in Los Angeles, Hammer raped her for four hours, slammed her head once morest a wall and committed other violent acts once morest her.
The woman appeared on camera but identified herself only by her first name.
“During those four hours I tried to get away but he wouldn’t let me,” she said through tears. “I thought that he was going to kill me. He then left with no concern for my well-being.”
The woman’s attorney, Gloria Allred, said they had given evidence to Los Angeles police, including photos of the woman’s injuries. Allred declined to say when they made the report, and would not confirm that it was the one made in February that the LAPD is investigating.
The woman was 20 when she and Hammer met on Facebook and began a relationship in 2016, and they had their last contact last year, Allred said.
Hammer’s attorney said in a statement that from the beginning he has maintained that all of his interactions with the woman and every other sexual partner “have been completely consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance, and mutually participatory.”
The statement called her allegations “attention seeking and ill-advised” and said “her own correspondence with Mr. Hammer undermines and refutes her outrageous allegations.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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