The adult film actor Ron Jeremy has been charged with raping three women and sexually assaulting a fourth, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office said on Tuesday.
According to the criminal complaint, the attacks date back to as far as 2014, with the most recent having occurred in July 2019. Three of the incidents detailed in the charges happened at the same bar in West Hollywood, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.
Allegations of sexual assault against Mr. Jeremy, one of the few in the adult-film industry whose name is familiar in the mainstream, first surfaced in the early days of the #MeToo movement, when he was the subject of a 2017 Rolling Stone article in which more than a dozen women came forward with accusations. Mr. Jeremy denied all of them to the magazine, saying, “I have never raped anyone.”
Golden Artists Entertainment, the management company that represented Mr. Jeremy, stuck with him after the 2017 report, believing that he had shown them proof of his innocence. But on Tuesday, Dante Rusciolelli, the owner of Golden Artists Entertainment, announced that the company was dropping Mr. Jeremy as a client. Mr. Jeremy’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to the complaint, Mr. Jeremy, 67, is accused of raping a 25-year-old woman at a West Hollywood home in 2014.
He is also accused of two attacks that prosecutors said took place in 2017 at the same bar in West Hollywood. Mr. Jeremy is charged with forcible rape and sexual battery by restraint in one case and with sexual penetration by use of force and sexual penetration by intoxicating substance in the second.
A fourth woman said that Mr. Jeremy raped her at the same bar last year, the news release said.
The district attorney’s office said that it had decided against prosecuting an additional case related to an incident in 2016 because of insufficient evidence.
Mr. Jeremy was scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday, and prosecutors recommended setting bail at $6.6 million. If convicted, Mr. Jeremy could face a maximum sentence of 90 years to life in prison, the district attorney’s office said.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
