After years of silence, Ron Jeremy's arrest spurs women to share stories of rape, groping
Lianne Young still remembers in vivid detail the night Ron Jeremy snuck up behind her on the Sunset Strip.
The adult film actress who went by the name "Billie Britt" was wearing a bikini inside the former House Of Blues at a porn industry Halloween party when she said Jeremy shoved her onto a table and forced himself inside her.
The ordeal lasted only seconds — Young says she fought Jeremy off — but there were at least three other people from the industry in the room, she said. None of them reacted. It was the same when she told her story to colleagues years later.
"People were just like, 'that's Ron,'" said Young, now 45.
Fear of Jeremy's stature in the business also led adult entertainer Elle Hell to keep quiet after she says Jeremy attacked her in Chicago in 2014. Despite the fact that she broke down crying and repeatedly said "no," Elle alleges Jeremy forced oral sex on her and tried to rape her.
"You have everyday citizens who are already excusing and validating his sexual assaults because we work in an industry where we are 'whores,'" she said.
Los Angeles prosecutors charged Jeremy in late June with sexually assaulting four women in West Hollywood. Within days, prosecutors said they had been contacted by 25 women across the country who made allegations "ranging from misdemeanor sexual battery to rape" against the man who for decades was one of the porn industry's most visible celebrities, according to court records.
Following his arrest, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department has also received 30 allegations of forcible rape and groping against Jeremy involving incidents that took place in L.A. County since 2000, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing case.
The claims are part of the sheriff's department's investigation of Jeremy, but none have been presented to prosecutors for charging yet, the official said. It was not clear how many of the 30 claims received by the sheriff's department overlapped with the 25 new allegations detailed by prosecutors in court last month, though only 13 of those 25 claims took place in L.A. County.
Six additional women, including Young and Elle, have contacted The Times since Jeremy's arrest, describing interactions with him from unwanted touching to violent rape. The allegations span two decades and both coasts.
Jeremy's attorney, Stuart Goldfarb, said he was unaware of the allegations made by the women quoted in this article, adding he was focused on defending his client against the charges he's facing in court.
"It's too early for me to even take it to him and discuss it. There's so many other things that we're working on right now. ... I know as much about them as you said to me," Goldfarb said.
Jeremy remains jailed in lieu of $6.6-million bail and has pleaded not guilty. The Los Angeles County district attorney's office declined to comment on this article.
The women had not contacted police or previously told their stories publicly before Jeremy's arrest, fearing they would face retribution or that they would not be believed. But each account shared one commonality: Jeremy, they said, never hesitated. If he saw something he wanted, he took it.
"He does things without asking. There's a lot of people who assume because we're adult actresses, that it's OK to just touch us inappropriately," said Alana Evans, president of the Adult Performers Actors Guild.
Evans was at the party where Young alleges Jeremy raped her, and said Young told her about the incident in the early 2000s. Evans described the alleged assault in near identical terms to the way Young did. Pat Cronenberg, a business associate of Young, also said she told him about the alleged attack in 2019.
Rumors of Jeremy's alleged misconduct have long swirled in the adult entertainment industry, but only exploded into the public eye in recent years.
In 2017, adult entertainer Ginger Banks compiled allegations against Jeremy in a 10-minute YouTube video that has since been viewed more than 200,000 times. Sheriff's detectives are now planning to interview Banks as they search for additional victims, she said.
Months later, Rolling Stone published allegations from a dozen women who said Jeremy either groped them or, in two cases, violently raped them. The claims led to Jeremy's expulsion from the adult film industry, as he was banned from both the Exxxotica Expo and the Adult Video News awards. In an article published last month, Rolling Stone detailed several more groping allegations from women outside the adult entertainment industry.
"I have never and would never rape anyone. All serious allegations have been investigated by police and dismissed by judges," Jeremy wrote in response to the 2017 Rolling Stone article.
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