Ron Jeremy's arrest uncovers more rape, groping stories

Adult film star Ron Jeremy is charged with sexually assaulting four women in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Aug. 5, 2020 Updated 6:33 AM PT

Lianne Young still remembers in vivid detail the night Ron Jeremy sneaked 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 Jeremy attacked her in Chicago in 2014, she says. Elle alleges that, despite the fact that she broke down crying and repeatedly said “no,” 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 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 L.A. Times since Jeremy’s arrest, describing interactions with him including unwanted touching as well as 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 was facing in court.

“It’s too early for me to even take it to him and discuss it,” Goldfarb said. “There’s so many other things that we’re working on right now. ... I know as much about them as you said to me.”

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 Young’s account. 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 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.

In spite of the allegations, Jeremy was invited to join dozens of women at a 2018 birthday celebration for brothel owner and reality TV star Dennis Hof at the Bunny Ranch near Carson City, Nev. Hof died later that weekend, and his body was discovered by Jeremy.

Less than 48 hours earlier, Jeremy allegedly assaulted a woman during Hof’s party, according to a sex worker who was formerly employed by Hof. The woman, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said she was horrified by Jeremy’s presence due to the recent allegations.

“I was just super sick that Ron was even in the building,” the woman said, noting Jeremy was a frequent visitor. “We all had seen things happening at the ranch, but I was just trying to fly low and do my own thing. But this time ... Dennis made that impossible.”

On the weekend of the birthday party, she said, Hof was introducing Jeremy to several women who worked at the ranch. The woman alleged Hof approached her, took her hand and placed it on Jeremy’s penis without consent.

When the party moved to the Bunny Ranch restaurant, the woman said Jeremy led her away from the partygoers and toward the back of the building. She said she tried to signal to co-workers, mouthing “help me,” but couldn’t get their attention.

Jeremy led the woman to an outside area behind the restaurant, pressed her up against a railing and forced himself inside her, she said.

“He bends me over the railing at the restaurant, lifts up my dress and does his thing,” she said. “I’m in shock. I don’t really know how to process what’s going on because it’s such a public area. What do you do?”

The woman said the attack lasted between 10 and 15 minutes.

“I feel guilty that I didn’t scream or anything,” she said. “I guess I didn’t know how to react.”

The woman said she did not report the alleged attack to police, in part because it took place just weeks before voters would decide on a ballot measure to shutter a number of Nevada’s brothels. She said she told ranch staff about the alleged attack but nothing was done.

The woman also reported the alleged attack to Banks and a close friend, adult actress Draven Star, the next day.

Draven, who sporadically worked at Hof’s brothels between 2017 and 2019, said she was also frustrated that Jeremy was there given the looming assault allegations. She saw the woman and Jeremy were both inside the Bunny Ranch restaurant on the night the alleged attack happened. The next morning, Draven said, her friend looked shellshocked.

“Those words that she told me are burned into my brain. … There’s no way she was making any of that up,” Draven said, adding that she had loaned the woman the dress she was wearing the night of the alleged attack.

Draven also confirmed that the woman reported the incident to a specific staff member. Draven said they never discussed going to the police, assuming they would be laughed out of the building.

“I do porn … she was a cam girl … and it’s Ron Jeremy,” Draven said. “So no. No one is going to take us seriously.”

Banks provided The Times with messages — time-stamped less than 24 hours after the woman claims the attack happened — where the woman describes the assault in graphic terms and expresses fear about Jeremy “doing this to other women.”

A spokesman for the Bunny Ranch did not respond to an email requesting comment.

In court filings made public, Los Angeles prosecutors detailed a number of uncharged allegations against Jeremy. One rape accusation from 1997 was unknown to prosecutors until “the initiation of the present investigation,” records show. Jeremy was also accused of forcing oral sex on women in 2006 and 2016 and forcibly raping a woman in 2010, according to the filing.

Several women who spoke to The Times said Jeremy crossed lines of consent almost as soon as he met them.

Sabrina Alvarado, a 36-year-old New Jersey woman who has appeared in Playboy and is better known as “Marcela Latinbabe” online, said she first met Jeremy at the Exxxotica Expo in Edison, N.J., in 2015. Alvarado said she was a little known “cam girl” when she approached Jeremy for a photo.

Alvarado alleged Jeremy immediately grabbed her breasts and put them in his mouth.

“I’ve been to that convention, maybe five years total, and that’s never happened to me with anyone — talent, fans or anything,” she said.

Alvarado provided pictures to The Times that showed Jeremy clutching and sucking on her breasts. Though she is smiling in the photos, Alvarado said she did not give Jeremy permission to touch her and was unnerved by his behavior.

“I was very naïve of what went down … and because this is a famous guy I … I didn’t know whether that was a normal thing or not,” she said.

Alvarado’s ex-husband, Mauricio Morales, took the pictures and said Jeremy grabbed Alvarado as soon as she asked for a photo.

“She was getting closer, just to take a normal picture, and that’s when he just groped her completely,” said Morales, who was married to Alvarado from 2003 to 2018.

Jeremy’s brash nature around beautiful women was well-known in the industry, according to Evans, the head of the adult performers union. Frequently, Evans said, women have complained that Jeremy has run a hand up their skirt and tried to digitally penetrate them without consent.

“He’s done that to me,” Evans said. “When enough women describe something that you have felt, then you know, OK, it’s absolutely real.”

Evans, who has performed scenes with Jeremy in the past, said she also witnessed him pulling up the skirt of an actress who was asleep while the two were on set together for a porn parody of “The Brady Bunch” in the mid-2000s.

“I look over and I see Ron has grabbed the corner of her dress and is lifting it up to look underneath. … It immediately made me uncomfortable,” said Evans, who woke the woman up immediately.

Colleen Pinto, a former adult film actress and exotic dancer in Florida, said Jeremy grabbed her breasts during an appearance at a strip club in 2005. Pinto said when she tried to pull away, Jeremy smacked her in the breast with a microphone.

“Any of us that were ever dancers or in the porn industry, we all have a Ron story,” said Pinto, 46. “You don’t ever meet Ron without him doing something to you.”

Victoria Martin, a former dancer who worked with Pinto at a different Florida club, said she remembered Pinto describing Jeremy striking her on stage in the mid-2000s.

Elle Hell said she was new to the industry when a chance encounter with another performer landed her next to Jeremy during the Exxxotica Expo near Chicago in 2014.

Elle said she got into a limousine with about 10 other people, including Jeremy, and drove to a bar. Not long after they went inside, Elle said Jeremy suddenly pulled her onto his lap. She claimed she had to use the bathroom to get away but said Jeremy followed her.

After Jeremy tried, and failed, to get access to a private room in the bar, Elle said Jeremy led her back to the limousine that they had arrived in.

Once inside, Elle said, Jeremy forcibly performed oral sex on her. Elle said she demanded that he stop, but Jeremy slid closer to her.

“He takes his [penis] out, and I remember this vividly, I’m crying,” she said.

Elle said Jeremy repeatedly tried to force himself on her, pressing his penis against her hard enough that he left an abrasion on her genitals, before giving up and growing angry. Jeremy led her back inside the club, where he wrote her a note, she said.

“You would cry, I hope ... if I ever leave,” he wrote, according to a picture of the note she posted to Twitter with his autograph.

Elle asked The Times not to use her legal name because she had previously been the victim of stalking and harassment.

Blake Clay, an amateur photographer who was in the limousine, said Elle and Jeremy were at the same after-party and that both had disappeared from the group at the bar. Clay, who took pictures of the two together, said Elle described the sexual assault to him later that night.

Another adult performer who was at the party confirmed Elle and Jeremy were there. The performer, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, said Elle later described an assault by Jeremy.

Young, the British actress who accused Jeremy of raping her in 2000, says she believes he has used his status as porn’s elder statesman to gain access to vulnerable young women for years.

Young left the industry and began counseling adult entertainers in England who had suffered abuse, but she maintains contact with friends in the American adult film business.

Some remained supportive of Jeremy over the years. But Young hopes that, now, people can finally see past his status as an icon.

“Many people were friends with him, saying, oh, Ron’s all right,” she said. “Well, no, he’s not all right. He’s not OK.”