Porn star Ron Jeremy charged with 20 more counts of sexual abuse in L.A. County
L.A. County prosecutors filed 20 more counts of sexual assault and groping against Ron Jeremy on Monday — including an allegation of lewd conduct with a minor — after dozens of additional women contacted law enforcement following the adult film star's arrest in late June.
Jeremy — who pleaded not guilty in June to allegations that he sexually assaulted four women in West Hollywood — now faces 28 criminal counts in L.A. County, including five counts of rape and six counts of sexual battery, according to the district attorney's office.
The amended complaint was filed during a Monday morning court appearance to schedule Jeremy's preliminary hearing, said Ricardo Santiago, a spokesman for the county district attorney's office.
Jeremy was originally facing eight counts of sexual assault stemming from allegations made by four women related to attacks in West Hollywood between 2014 and 2019. But after his initial court appearance, dozens of other women came forward in California and throughout the U.S.
Just three days after Jeremy was initially charged, Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Thompson said prosecutors had received an additional 25 allegations of misconduct involving Jeremy, 13 of which had occurred in L.A. County. Since then, six additional women who worked in the adult entertainment industry have told The Times that Jeremy had raped or abused them.
The Sheriff's Department has interviewed 50 additional women who made allegations against Jeremy since June, said Lt. John Adams of the agency's special victims bureau. Eleven of those women are now part of the amended criminal complaint, Adams said.
Some women whose claims did not result in criminal charges could still testify at Jeremy's trial, Adams said. Prosecutors have said in previous court filings they plan to call so-called prior bad acts witnesses who can testify to similar, but uncharged, criminal behavior. A similar strategy played a key role in Harvey Weinstein's conviction on rape charges in Manhattan earlier this year.
Two of the other new allegations were investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division, authorities said.
Jeremy's defense attorney, Stu Goldfarb, said his client pleaded not guilty to the new charges in a downtown court appearance Monday. Jeremy is due back in court in late October.
The new allegations span from 2004 to 2020, prosecutors said, and include an allegation that Jeremy sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl at a party in Santa Clarita. The most recent alleged incident took place on New Year's Day, when prosecutors say Jeremy assaulted a woman outside of a business in Hollywood.
In the original criminal complaint filed in June, prosecutors charged Jeremy with forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual battery. Investigators said he had prowled the Sunset Strip and leveraged his celebrity status to gain access to women, whom he then took advantage of while they were drunk.
Allegations of groping and sexual assault have hovered around Jeremy since 2017. In the span of a few months, a video detailing past sexual abuse claims against him gained more than 200,000 views on YouTube, and Rolling Stone published allegations of groping and violent rape levied by a dozen women. The allegations made Jeremy a pariah in the industry that had launched him to fame.
