Adult film star Ron Jeremy charged with rape, sexual assault
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Adult film star Ron Jeremy was charged with raping
three women and sexually assaulting a fourth, Los Angeles County
prosecutors said Tuesday.
The counts make the 67-year-old Jeremy
the third man to be charged, along with Harvey Weinstein and producer
David Guillod, by a task force formed by District Attorney Jackie Lacey
in 2017 to investigate sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry.
Jeremy,
nicknamed “The Hedgehog,” is among the best known and most prolific
actors in the history of the adult film industry, with thousands of
credits to his name.
Jeremy, whose real name is Ronald Jeremy
Hyatt, appeared in court Tuesday, wearing handcuffs and a face mask, but
did not enter a plea. A judge delayed his arraignment until Friday and
set his bail at $6.6 million.
Jeremy’s attorney Stuart Goldfarb said he is “absolutely innocent of the charges. It’s not a close call.”
Jeremy
was charged with three counts each of forcible rape and forcible
penetration by a foreign object and one count each of forcible oral
copulation and sexual battery. If convicted of all the counts he could
face 90 years in prison.
Prosecutors allege Jeremy raped a
25-year-old woman at a West Hollywood home in May 2014, sexually
assaulted a 33-year-old woman and a 46-year-old woman in separate
incidents at a West Hollywood bar in 2017, and raped a 30-year-old woman
at the same bar in July of last year.
Goldfarb said witnesses
who spoke to both detectives and his own investigator have cast doubt on
the allegations. The lawyer said Jeremy often gropes women with their
consent during public appearances, and suggested his long life as an
adult performer makes him less likely to have committed sexual crimes.
“There
is absolutely no reason for him to ever be aggressive with women,”
Goldfarb said. “He’s had more women than you can count.”
He added that the bail amount was “horrendously high.”
Jeremy
was investigated by the Hollywood task force after it was formed during
a wave of sexual misconduct allegations that began in late 2017 with
media reports about Weinstein that launched the #MeToo era.
The task force has investigated more than 20 men, but Jeremy is just the third to be charged.
Prosecutors
have begun efforts to bring Weinstein to California to face charges of
rape and sexual assault. He is being held in a New York prison after
being convicted of similar charges earlier this year. He has denied
engaging in any non-consensual sex.
On Monday, Guillod, a
producer on the 2017 film “Atomic Blonde” and the 2020 Netflix movie
“Extraction,” was arrested in Santa Barbara County and charged with 11
felonies, most of them rape counts, that were investigated by Lacey’s
task force.
Guillod’s attorney Philip K. Cohen said in a
statement that “for the past eight years, Mr. Guillod has denied these
allegations” and an “overwhelming amount of evidence has been collected
over the course of this investigation disputing these charges.”
Los
Angeles prosecutors charged “That ‘70s Show” actor Danny Masterson last
week with the rapes of three women, though that investigation preceded
the formation of the Hollywood task force. Masterson denied the charges
and his attorney said he will be vindicated.
Another allegation against Jeremy from 2016, was declined by the task force because of insufficient evidence.
In
recent years, Jeremy has appeared in more mainstream entertainment,
including music videos and reality television shows like “The Surreal
Life.”