Porn star Ron Jeremy was charged on Tuesday with raping three women and sexually assaulting a fourth.
Jeremy, 67, now faces eight counts—including forcible rape, forcible penetration, and forcible oral copulation—for the separate incidents, which date back to 2014, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said.
Prosecutors allege that in May 2014, Jeremy forcibly raped a 25-year-old woman at a home in West Hollywood. Three years later, the adult film star allegedly sexually assaulted two women—ages 33 and 46—on separate occasions at a West Hollywood bar. In July 2019, prosecutors allege Jeremy raped another 30-year-old woman at the same bar.
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If convicted, he faces up to 90 years to life in prison. Prosecutors are recommending bail be set at $6.6 million at the 67-year-old’s hearing Tuesday afternoon.
The charges against Jeremy, whose legal name is Ronald Jeremy Hyatt, come after years of swirling sexual-assault allegations against the porn star, including numerous accusations that he groped and digitally penetrated women without their consent. While the mounting allegations against the 40-year porn veteran did not yield criminal charges until Tuesday, Jeremy has been banned from most of the adult industry’s high-profile events. He still, however, films on occasion and has a dedicated fan-base.
The Daily Beast exclusively reported in May that the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office was investigating the new assault claims, after previously declining to prosecute a case against Jeremy in 2016 due to “insufficient evidence.” In 2018, L.A. authorities were also reportedly probing Jeremy after a woman alleged he groped her in the bathroom of a West Hollywood bar.
The Daily Beast—along with several other publications—first reported sexual assault claims by two women against Jeremy in 2017.
One of the women, Kristin Brodie, said Jeremy sexually assaulted her when she was a 22-year-old model competing to become a 2017 KISW Rock Girl—a highly coveted position representing an award-winning Washington state radio station. After asking to sign her breast during the competition, Jeremy allegedly sexually assaulted her.
“He turned me around and started sucking on the back of my neck while still groping me and tapping his fingers and trying to push them through the [underwear] cloth. At this point I start looking around for anyone to do something because it’s pretty clear on my face that I’m in distress. I was looking for anybody that could register on their face what I was feeling, and all I was met with were faces looking on like a car accident was happening, and there wasn’t going to be any help,” Brodie told The Daily Beast.
Brodie said at one point Jeremy put his mouth on her nipple. She reported the incident to the police, but the Tacoma City Attorney’s Office declined to press charges against him. In a statement at the time, Jeremy said, in part, “If you were going to be around Ron Jeremy, wouldn’t you assume that I’d be a little bit touchy feely? Yes. This is what I do for a living.”
Later that year, another prominent adult film actress told The Daily Beast Jeremy sexually assaulted her during their introduction meeting.
“The first time I met him on set he put his fingers in my pussy unexpectedly. I was brand new, outside smoking a cigarette and he comes out just being Ron Jeremy. All of a sudden he’s fingering me, and I’m like whoa. He was just there as an extra on set, he wasn’t even there performing,” says the female porn star. “We joke about it—there’s Ron stay five feet away from him because he does that. We don’t think anything of it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t even register. It’s like, oh great, another girl got groped by Ron Jeremy, join the club.”
Last month, after Jeremy documented his fight to save his childhood tree on social media, another prominent adult film actress and writer—Janice Griffith—took to Twitter to call out the 67-year-old.
“Did Ron tweet this in between bouts of sexually harassing people? He’s banned from almost all industry events for groping people without consent,” Griffith, who says Jeremy groped her when she was a teenager, tweeted.
