Ron Jeremy: adult film star charged with rape and sexual assault of four women
The adult film star Ron Jeremy was charged with raping three women and sexually assaulting a fourth, Los Angeles county prosecutors said Tuesday.
Jeremy, 67, whose real name is Ron Jeremy Hyatt, 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 Jeremy is convicted, the charges could lead to a sentence of 90 years in prison.
He is scheduled to be arraigned later Tuesday. Prosecutors say they will ask for bail of $6.6m. Emails seeking comment from Jeremy sent to several of his representatives were not immediately returned.
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 46year-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.
Another allegation from 2016, was declined by prosecutors because of insufficient evidence.
Jeremy, nicknamed “the Hedgehog”, is among the best known and most prolific actors in the industry’s history, with thousands of credits to his name.
In recent years he has made a career of appearing in more mainstream entertainment, including music videos and reality television shows such as The Surreal Life.
The counts make Jeremy the third man to be charged, along with Harvey Weinstein and producer David Guillod, by a task force formed by the Los Angeles district attorney, Jackie Lacey, in 2017 to investigate sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry in the wake of #MeToo.
The task force has investigated more than 20 men.
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, California, and charged with 11 felonies, most of them rape counts.
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 have also 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.