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Actor Shia LaBeouf has made headlines this year for a series of antics including retiring from public life, staging a performance art piece and being arrested at a Broadway show. Now, he says he was raped during his art show.
LaBeouf staged #IAMSORRY after plagiarizing Daniel Clowes' work for a short film; at a Los Angeles gallery, LaBeouf sat at a table face-to-face with visitors. He told Dazed and Confused, "I went from being a celebrity or object to a fellow human. I was genuinely remorseful. It wasn’t manipulation, I was heartbroken."
When the magazine asked, "Did any experiences stand out to you as particularly moving or unsettling?" LaBeouf replied
One woman who came with her boyfriend, who was outside the door when this happened, whipped my legs for ten minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape me… There were hundreds of people in line when she walked out with dishevelled hair and smudged lipstick. It was no good, not just for me but her man as well. On top of that my girl was in line to see me, because it was Valentine’s Day and I was living in the gallery for the duration of the event - we were separated for five days, no communication. So it really hurt her as well, as I guess the news of it travelled through the line. When she came in she asked for an explanation, and I couldn’t speak, so we both sat with this unexplained trauma silently. It was painful.
When LaBeouf met with Dazed and Confused writer Aimee Cliff, he told her they'd wear GoPro cameras strapped to their heads and look at each other for an hour.
