Shia LaBeouf Art Exhibit Collaborators Appear to Validate ‘Rape Incident’

Nastja Säde Rönkkö and Luke Turner, two artists who collaborated with Shia LaBeouf on his #IAMSORRY art exhibit in Los Angeles in February, took to Twitter Sunday night to defend the actor’s claims that he was raped during the exhibition.

Piers Morgan, who has been critical of the actor’s claim, asked Turner why they would allow the alleged rapist to leave the gallery in a tweet Sunday night. 

“It wasn’t clear at the time precisely what had happened, & the 1st priority was to ensure everybody’s safety in the gallery,” Turner responded. “She ran out, rather than simply walking away. Beyond that, it’s not my place to comment.”

Rönkkö issued a series of tweets of his own:

A couple of important clarifications about our #IAMSORRY project earlier this year:

— Nastja Säde Rönkkö (@NastjaRonkko) November 30, 2014

Nowhere did we state that people could do whatever they wanted to Shia during #IAMSORRY.

— Nastja Säde Rönkkö (@NastjaRonkko) November 30, 2014

As soon as we were aware of the incident starting to occur, we put a stop to it and ensured that the woman left.

— Nastja Säde Rönkkö (@NastjaRonkko) November 30, 2014

“As soon as we were aware of the incident starting to occur, we put a stop to it and ensured that the woman left,”Rönkkö concluded.

LaBeouf told Dazed and Confused magazine earlier this month that he was raped in a Los Angeles art gallery during his #IAMSORRY performance art piece, in which the actor invited guests one by one into a room to spend time with him while he mostly remained silent or cried.

This was LaBeouf’s account of what happened to him:

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 disheveled hair and smudged lipstick… 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… So it really hurt her as well, as I guess the news of it traveled through the line. When she came in and asked for an explanation, and I couldn’t speak, so we both sat with this unexplained trauma silently. It was painful.