LOS ANGELES: Adult film star Ron Jeremy was charged Monday with 20 new counts of rape or sexual assault involving 12 women and a teenage girl, authorities said.
The charges came two months after the 67-year-old Jeremy was charged with the rape of three women and the sexual assault of a fourth.
Jeremy pleaded not guilty to the new charges in Los Angeles Superior Court and previously denied the earlier allegations.
Jeremy, whose legal name is Ronald Jeremy Hyatt, has been held in jail on $6.6 million bail since June.
The new counts span 16 years, from 2004 to January of this year, when authorities say he sexually assaulted a 21-year-old woman outside a business in Hollywood.
The charges include five counts of forcible rape and six counts of sexual battery by restraint. They also include an allegation that he sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl at a party in 2004.
Six of the alleged assaults took place at a bar in West Hollywood where Jeremy was a regular, prosecutors said.
After the previous charges were filed, Jeremy’s attorney Stuart Goldfarb said he was absolutely innocent. Goldfarb did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on the new counts.
Investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department put out a call for more possible victims to come forward when the initial charges were filed in June. Prosecutors said they received dozens of calls in the days that followed.
The combined counts could bring sentences totaling more than 250 years in prison.
Jeremy, nicknamed The Hedgehog, has been among the best known and most prolific performers in the adult film industry since the 1970s.
He was investigated and charged by a district attorney’s task force formed to take on sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry as the #MeToo era gained momentum in late 2017.
___
This story has been corrected to show that the person Jeremy was charged with assaulting early this year was a 21-year-old woman, not a girl.
___
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton.
Comments
0 comment