Adult actress Aria Lee has decided to act as her own attorney in a $10 million lawsuit filed against her by the porn director Craven Moorehead. In a court filing from Dec. 18, first reported by Page Six, the 20-year-old Lee wrote that she’d represent “in pro per”—the legal term meaning “for oneself.”
Lee’s filing came in response to a defamation suit filed against her in September by Moorehead. In his complaint, the director described a video that Lee shared on Twitter over the summer in which she alleged that he had sexually assaulted her on two separate occasions.
In the video, Lee read from a letter, which she claimed was sent to porn publication Adult Video News by an “anonymous person” unknown to her. (Lee does not say she wrote the letter, but claims she “hasn’t told this to anyone, besides AVN.”) The letter alleged, and Lee appeared to affirm, that in October of 2019 Moorehead forced her to perform oral sex on him in the bathroom of a film set, and that a similar “attack” took place on another film set two months later.
Lee alleged in an interview with AVN that she had asked Moorehead where the bathroom was during a lunch break when things went south. “He was like, ‘Of course, I’ll walk you up there, this place is confusing.’ He was being nice. I thought he was being a good director,” Lee told the adult publication. “And he takes me to the bathroom, as I’m closing the door, he rushes in, pushes the door closed, pushes me down to my knees, takes his dick out and then makes me suck his dick… And he just walked out and acted like nothing happened.” The allegations were later reported by Vice’s Motherboard and XBIZ.
“There’s a cover-up going on at Gamma,” the letter read, according to a transcript provided in the original complaint, “porn performer Aria Lee has accused Craven Moorehead of raping her on set on Oct. 11, 2019… when she stepped forward to tell her story to Gamma, they did nothing… there has been two other incidents that Craven has been accused of assault or rape and the company has done nothing [sic].”
Moorehead denies the allegations, which the complaint called “false and defamatory.” The director claimed he was terminated from Gamma Films Group, with whom he had been contracting, and “exposed to public contempt, ridicule, disgrace, shame, and humiliation.” The filing called for general and compensatory damages “in a sum not less than $10,000,000.00.”
After the video’s publication in June, Gamma released a statement claiming they had been made aware of the allegations in January of 2020 and performed an independent investigation. “The conclusion of that investigation,” the company wrote, as cited by the filing, “was that it had been impossible to validate the veracity of the allegations in question.” Three days later, the company amended its statement in a comment to Motherboard, to note that they had received “additional information” about the allegations and decided to “sever ties” with Moorehead.
In her self-authored response to Moorehead’s lawsuit, Lee wrote that she “denies generally and specifically, singularly and conjunctively, each and every allegation of the Complaint and each cause of action contained therein.” She claimed that Moorehead and his production company, Black Wings Media, Inc., “failed to state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action against” her, and that because the content of the video was true, it did not amount to defamation. Because of Moorehead’s conduct, she wrote in her answer, the director and his company had “waived any claim they have” against her.
Moorehead, a prolific adult director who was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame in 2015, has directed some 377 adult films. He runs the pornography production company Black Wing, Inc. Lee was named AVN’s “Best New Starlet” in 2020.
The initial video came amid a spate of sexual abuse allegations in the adult industry. Ten women came forward to The Daily Beast detailing a range of sexual misconduct and abuse accusations against porn director and performer Ryan Madison (he denies the claims), while a Motherboard article revealed abuse allegations against Motley Models president Dave Rock (he released a statement alleging it was “consensual sex”) and Moorehead. Porn legend Ron Jeremy, meanwhile, is currently facing charges of assaulting 23 women between 1996 and 2020.
Lee also pointed out that Moorehead’s attorney did not refer to either party by their legal names in his initial filing, but used their stage names. Failing to identify the proper plaintiff and defendant, she argued, disqualified them from relief.
“We expect to prove that what she said was false,” said Robert Hantman, Moorehead’s New York attorney. “I have no reason to respect her less as a person, except that we believe what she alleged was false.”
Lee did not respond to multiple requests for comment. “We should not be taken advantage of on set that we are working for,” she said in the video. “We should not.”
