“I didn’t know calling him a bitch was a trigger word. I had no idea. I’d never worked with him before.”
One well-known adult actress discovered, quite by accident, how to provoke James Deen with a single word.
And it’s a day she’ll never forget.
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Sharing her story exclusively with The Daily Beast, adult actress Amber Rayne wants to be clear about why she’s coming forward now. It’s not for the attention. In fact she’d prefer not to have it. What allegedly happened between her and Deen was long ago, an event she’d dismissed as a one-off until recently.
The first accusation against Deen came from ex-girlfriend and fellow adult actor Stoya, who tweeted, “James Deen held me down and fucked me while I said no, stop, used my safeword,” she tweeted. “I just can’t nod and smile when people bring him up anymore.”
Stoya’s allegations have encouraged a number of other women to come forward with their own horrifying stories. Former porn star Tori Lux opened up about Deen’s sexual assault in an essay first published at The Daily Beast, accusing him of striking her and then “forcing my face into his crotch several times before shoving me to the floor.” Adult actress Ashley Fires later revealed to The Daily Beast she was attacked and had “almost been raped” by Deen.
As Deen’s friend and colleague, Rayne’s decision to share her story was a difficult—and painful—one. Years have passed, and since the incident she’s developed a friendship with Deen, in spite of how they met. Rayne seems to genuinely care about her colleague and hesitates to share her initial experience, not wanting to cause him any more grief. “I’ve gotten to know him on many different levels,” says Rayne. “There’s a friendship that’s developed. I don’t want to betray or lose that, but at the same time this did happen, and it happened to other people that I know and love.”
“We’re friends now and I’ll sometimes bring it up as a joke and you can see it makes him physically uncomfortable when I do, so he does realize something was wrong that day,” says Rayne. “I thought it was an insecurity phase. He was just starting out, he was still a young punk kid coming in and I still didn’t know what the game was.” There’s no training in porn. It’s all on-the-job training, with few performers willing to mentor newbies.
“We were in a piledriver, he was fucking me in the ass and I said something like, ‘Yeah fuck me like that you son of a bitch.’ His face twisted and he came down on my face two times—close-fisted,” says Rayne. “I was punched in the face while he was still in my ass and then he starts going crazy on my butt—extreme, brutally fucking it. He just starts shoving things in to the point where he ripped it and I bled everywhere. There was so much blood I couldn’t finish the scene.”
Released in 2006, in a scene some fans call the “weirdest in porn,” the director, the late Chico Wang, alluded to these issues in a forum post about the movie's release. “It seemed I went a bit overboard when one of the girls, Amber Rayne, suddenly couldn’t finish her scene because of backdoor problems.”
She remembers hearing the director say, “Oh, shit.” The director’s assistant took her into the bathroom to assess the damage. In his opinion, she needed stitches (which she later received). Ever the consummate professional, Rayne said, “I’ll be fine,” determined to finish the scene, somehow. She and the director decided on a multiple-guy BJ scene (sans Deen) featuring her face instead of the injured rear.
“It took many years before we worked together again… my agent showed up at the end of that scene and said, ‘We’re taking you straight to the hospital.’ He was pissed,” says Rayne. “I was a big money-maker and I was out of commission.”
Years later she consented to working with Deen—again under the supervision of a trusted director. “I went in [to the scene] waiting for a battle, ‘I’m going to take you on now.’ It was a challenge, like, ‘I will break you,’ and it ended up being a really sweet scene. At the time, people really liked working with him and it was that scene when I realized why,” says Rayne. “It seemed like he’d grown up significantly, at least in his interactions with me, and I grew into a stronger person as well.”
Looking back, Rayne says she rationalized the incident by thinking of Deen as really young and new to the business. But now that so many others have come forward, the newbie excuse no longer applies. “I can’t blame it on immaturity anymore. I can’t blame it on being new to the industry and being some young kid. No, you know better.”
Sex is about communication and trust, not just penetration—especially on porn sets.
There are few consequences for the directors, agents, and/or performers cashing in on inexperienced newbies who haven’t yet made a name for themselves and don’t possess the agency to take a stand yet.
Early on in her career, adult actress Kora Peters claims she was also taken advantage of by Deen during an on-camera scene.
It was supposed to be a regular boy/girl sex scene (anal was one of her “no’s”), but her co-star apparently had other plans. “James [Deen] kept trying to get inside my ass but I kept pushing him away, so he choked me, then he slammed my face down into the couch and forced himself in my ass anyway,” says Peters. “The crew all high-fived him and told him what a great job he did getting an anal scene for the price of a boy/girl scene.”
Violated and in need of support following the scene, Peters called her agent at the time. “He said I should feel honored that James wanted me so badly because he was one of the best male performers,” Peters says.
Ever since that scarring incident, Peters says she’s avoided Deen and hasn’t worked with him since. “I just want to prevent this from happening to any other women,” says Peters. “It’s crazy how I was the one under attack and James got accolades for raping me on set.”
