Tentpole DCEU star Ezra Miller has been in the news a lot lately and not always for the best reasons. One of those stories involved allegations that the star was grooming and abusing an 18-year-old Standing Rock Sioux tribal member named Tokata Iron Eyes.
In an interview with Insider, Tokata said the abuse never happened. For background: Tokata’s parents, Sara Jumping Eagle and Chase Iron Eyes, accused Miller of grooming their daughter for years – all the way back to when Tokata was 12 years old. They claimed Miller’s abuse led to bruises on Tokata’s face and arms, and they asked for a restraining order back in June.
The allegations, Tokata said, were “a disgusting and irresponsible smear campaign” against the actor, and she further insisted that Miller “in multiple cases has done the right thing and stood in protection of others.”
The two reportedly met in 2016, when Miller went to North Dakota to protest against the Dakota Access pipeline. They kept in touch over the years, the parents said, with Miller offering help and sometimes just showing up unannounced.
There are also allegations from a family friend that the two had sex during a trip. Tokata remarked on this, saying it was “so very false.”
Earlier this year on a farm in Vermont, Miller and some other people called Tokata’s parents to say she was in a bad state after taking the hallucinogenic drug LSD. Tokata’s parents reportedly flew out to Vermont and found their daughter screaming and “incoherent,” so much so that Tokata couldn’t talk for days. Tokata said she microdosed with LSD and harmed herself over a friend’s death. Other bruises, she said, were probably a result of her parents “violently” dragging her out of the house. The parents deny this happening.
Miller was also accused of hiding Tokata’s phone “for her safety” and being “verbally abusive,” according to a friend of Miller’s named Oliver Ignatius, who also said Miller pressured Tokata to change her name to Gibson. When Tokata put on makeup at one point, Ignatius said Miller yelled at her and said “What the f*ck are you doing? Putting on this fucking clown paint?”
She denies this happening.
“That was Queer dialogue about a badly applied rouge on my part, which I appreciated,” she said. “I think the fact that a catty comment made by a queer person about makeup being considered abuse is actually quite homophobic rhetoric.”
Other reports claim Miller drives around with a gun and bullet proof vest over fears of being trailed by both the FBI and the Ku Klux Klan. Tokata claims that the vest is “a fashionable safety measure in response to actual attacks and received death threats.”
If you are experiencing domestic abuse, or if you believe someone you know is being abused, contact The National Domestic Violence Hotline. The hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE or spoken with online via the hotline’s website. Mobile phone owners can also text “START” to the number 88788.