Armie Hammer Set to Appear in Court Over New Sexual Misconduct Claim
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A judge dismissed a restraining order case against Armie Hammer on Wednesday after the actor and a 26-year-old woman, who accused him of choking her unconscious during a sexual encounter, both failed to appear for a court hearing in Aspen, Colorado.
The woman, whom Rolling Stone is choosing not to name, filed papers in Pitkin County on Feb. 1. (The accuser did not reply to a request for comment.) Earlier this month, Hammer insisted in an interview that all his sexual encounters were consensual after he was accused of rape, having violence-based kinks and a cannibalism fetish.
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The judge had granted a temporary restraining order on Feb. 3 and noted on Wednesday that because both parties were absent, the case would be dismissed. The judge added that the woman could refile if she chose.
Hammer’s attorney, Andrew Brettler, had previously denied the woman’s accusation to Rolling Stone, asserting that Hammer didn’t know the woman and that Hammer had proof that he was not in New York City on the date alleged in the application for the order. “We do not anticipate that the court will grant the restraining order,” he added on Tuesday.
In the woman’s application for the restraining order, she claims that she and Hammer had a consensual sexual history, in which they agreed to use a “safe word” and make a signal “in situations where it was too much for one of us,” she alleges in court papers.
During one encounter last summer in New York City, the woman alleges Hammer “choked me during sexual intercourse that led me to lose consciousness,” according to her restraining order application. Noting her previous encounters with Hammer, the woman alleges Hammer’s “violent behavior got worse, but this was the first time where I had felt that it went entirely too far because I begged for him to stop and deployed our safe word and tapped him on his shoulder.”
The woman claims Hammer was under the influence of alcohol, ecstasy and ketamine during the alleged assault. On January 27, she alleges Hammer had reached out to her after months without contact. “I would like for the contact to stop,” she wrote. In her application, the woman identified her as a victim of sexual assault.
It’s been two years since Hammer has been effectively shunned from Hollywood and his career derailed over allegations of sexual assault and cannibalistic fantasies. Once a leading man in films such as Call Me By Your Name and Rebecca, the 36-year-old was swiftly dropped from several high-profile projects and briefly began selling timeshares in the Cayman Islands to maintain an income.
His fall from grace came when “Effie,” of the anonymous Instagram account “House of Effie,” began posting dozens of screenshots of explicit DMs allegedly between the two. Hammer seemed to be engaged in a years-long affair with the woman and, according to the alleged messages, repeatedly discussed his sexual fantasies of rape, violent acts during sexual encounters and cannibalism.
More women subsequently came forward to detail their alleged unsettling relationships with Hammer. Influencer Paige Lorenze claimed that she and Hammer began dating in Sept. 2020, shortly after Hammer announced his separation from then-wife Elizabeth Chambers. During the few months they were together, Lorenze claimed Hammer had discussed “eating her ribs” and had carved an ‘A’ near her pubic bone with a knife, licking her blood from the wound.
Beauty-app founder Courtney Vucekovich also alleged that while dating Hammer in summer 2020, the actor had “love bombed” and “manipulated” her into participating in extreme BDSM sexual acts – “things that frankly scared me,” Vucekovich said. After breaking up, Vucekovich claimed she checked into a month-long intensive therapy program for PTSD.
Effie appeared at a press conference alongside attorney Gloria Allred in March 2021 to accuse Hammer of raping her over the course of four hours in Los Angeles in April 2017. “I thought that he was going to kill me,” Effie said. (Hammer denied that he had assaulted Effie, claiming the encounter was consensual and pre-planned.) That same day, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed it had opened an investigation into the claim. As of this week, that investigation is still ongoing, a spokesperson confirmed to Rolling Stone.
Hammer has largely maintained his silence throughout the scandal, first calling the claims “bullshit” while bowing out of Shotgun Wedding, which he was supposed to star alongside Jennifer Lopez. When testimonies from his former romantic partners began circulating, Brettler vehemently denied any accusations of wrongdoing on behalf of his client and said that all of Hammer’s sexual encounters were “completely consensual, discussed and agreed upon in advance, and mutually participatory.”
On Feb. 4, Hammer spoke with Air Mail in a wide-ranging interview to discuss the allegations, as well as revealing that he had been sexually abused by a pastor when he was 13. Hammer admitted he was emotionally abusive in his relationships and acknowledged a power imbalance. “I would scoop up these women, bring them into it — into this whirlwind of travel and sex and drugs and big emotions flying around — and then as soon as I was done, I’d just drop them off and move on to the next woman, leaving that woman feeling abandoned or used,” he said.
Still, Hammer claimed that all sexual acts were consensual, including Effie’s alleged sexual assault, describing it as a pre-planned ‘consensual non-consent scene,’ which is common in the BDSM world to safely explore partners’ rape fantasies. “This alleged rape was a scene that was her idea,” Hammer claimed. “She planned all of the details out, all the way down to what Starbucks I would see her at, how I would follow her home, how her front door would be open and unlocked and I would come in.” Effie has since maintained her account of the nature of that encounter.
This story was updated 2/15/23 at 4:35 p.m. ET with the judge’s dismissal of the restraining order.
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