Ansel Elgort has responded to a woman who claimed in a viral Twitter post that he had sexually assaulted her in 2014 when she was 17.
The actor, now 26, denied assaulting the woman, whom he called Gabby and who shared her accusations from the Twitter account @Itsgabby on Friday.
"I was distressed to see the social media posts about me that have been circulating in the past 24 hours," Elgort wrote in an Instagram post late Saturday. "I cannot claim to understand Gabby’s feelings but her description of events is simply not what happened."
The young woman, who deleted her Twitter account after her accusations drew tens of thousands of retweets, claimed she met the actor when they messaged on social media and he provided her with his private Snapchat account.
She said that she was sobbing in pain when they had sex because she was a virgin, but he did not stop and instead said he needed to "break [her] in."
"He made me think this is how sex was supposed to be," she wrote. "I WAS SO YOUNG AND HE KNEW THAT."
The woman also shared a screenshot of Snapchat DM dated from 2014, as well as a photo of herself with Elgort in which her face was partially covered by her hand.
Representatives for Elgort did not respond when contacted by BuzzFeed News for comment on Friday.
But in his Saturday Instagram post, the actor acknowledged he knew Gabby and said they had had a "brief, legal, and entirely consensual relationship" when he was 20 in 2014.
"Unfortunately, I did not handle the breakup well," he said. "I stopped responding to her, which is an immature and cruel thing to do to someone. I know this belated apology does not absolve me of my unacceptable behavior when I disappeared."
The actor said he was "truly sorry" and "disgusted and deeply ashamed" for ghosting the young woman.
Elgort — best known for his roles in The Fault in Our Stars (2014), Divergent (2014), and Baby Driver (2017) — is also starring in the lead role of Tony in Steven Spielberg's upcoming remake of West Side Story.