Adult film actor Ron Jeremy is being sued for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman during a radio promotional event last year in Washington state.
Kristin Brodie claims that Jeremy, 65, assaulted her four separate times on Sept. 22, 2017, while she was working as a model for a Seattle radio station at a store event in Tacoma, according to court documents. (Although Brodie is identified as K.B. in those documents, her attorney told HuffPost that she would like to be referred to by her full name.)
Brodie, 22, filed a civil suit against Jeremy (real name: Ronald Jeremy Hyatt) on Wednesday after the Tacoma City Attorney’s Office declined to press criminal charges in March.
“Defendant Hyatt forced himself upon K.B. in four distinct sexual assaults over the course of the evening, taking advantage of K.B.’s youth, trust and professionalism in a role which required her to project happy enthusiasm on behalf of the radio station,” the lawsuit contends.
On the first occasion, Brodie consented to Jeremy signing her breast in order to maintain “an atmosphere of ‘fun,’” the suit states. Instead of simply signing, the complaint alleges that Jeremy “violently groped” the young woman’s breast.
In the second incident, Jeremy allegedly groped Brodie’s butt while the two were taking a selfie. Directly afterward, he put his hand between Brodie’s legs and began sucking on her neck, according to the complaint.
When Jeremy’s handler attempted to intervene, the porn star allegedly said, “I’ll be done in a sec” and then digitally penetrated Brodie through her underwear. That was the third incident.
“Did that give you goosebumps?” Jeremy asked Brodie, the suit states.
The last assault allegedly occurred when Brodie attempted to leave and Jeremy asked to say goodbye. According to the complaint, he then pulled down Brodie’s shirt and bra and sucked on her bare nipple.
A spokesperson for Jeremy’s team responded to the allegation in a statement to HuffPost:
This case was already dropped by the district attorney and police. There were lots of people, including security guards and video cameras. The police and district attorneys looked at all of the videos and dropped the case. Our team received a phone call from the police at the time, they said that they reviewed all of the videos and spoke to witnesses and found no evidence. They said that they still had to send it off to the district attorney, who obviously found nothing. I guess people can sue for anything these days.
Brodie’s attorney Anne Bremner told HuffPost that she believes Jeremy won’t stop this type of behavior.
“He seems to feel like he can just continue in this pattern of sexually abusing women with impunity,” Bremner said. “The fact that he’s in the porn industry in some ways makes it worse because he feels like he can justify what he’s doing by virtue of who he is. He’s no different than anybody else ― Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby. They all have patterns behind them that were ignored for a long time. And that’s what empowered them to keep doing what they were doing.”
Since the alleged assault, Brodie has dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder and suffered a miscarriage due to emotional trauma, according to Bremner.
She added that her client is adamant about publicly identifying herself because “she doesn’t want [Jeremy] to keep doing this.”
“She wants to be public. She wants him to be held accountable. She thought he should have been prosecuted and should still be prosecuted,” Bremner said. “He’s had a trail of victims behind him, but I hope he doesn’t have a trail of victims ahead of him.”
“He’s no different than anybody else ― Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby. They all have patterns behind them that were ignored for a long time. And that’s what empowered them to keep doing what they were doing.”
- Anne Bremner, attorney for Kristin Brodie
Jeremy’s attorney Stuart Goldfarb disputed part of Brodie’s story in a Wednesday interview with local station KOMO News Radio. “He absolutely denies that ― he didn’t put his finger into her,” Goldfarb said of his client.
Everything else in the lawsuit, he argued, was consensual.
“Women often line up and there’s mutual touching. [Jeremy] in many cases autographs their breast and it’s consensual,” Goldfarb said. “I don’t know if he pulled her shirt down, but I know that he may have touched her breast, he may have kissed her on the back of her neck and he’s been doing this for 40 years and has never had a problem. ... She came back after she said he touched her and was doing a selfie with him. ... If, in fact, she felt it was inappropriate, she should have said something and, believe me, he wouldn’t have touched her.”
Jeremy has been accused of sexual misconduct, including rape, by over a dozen women during his four-decade-long porn career. In a 2017 Rolling Stone article, adult film actresses Jay Taylor and Danica Dane accused him of digitally penetrating them at adult industry conventions without their consent. During Taylor’s incident, Jeremy also allegedly attempted to penetrate her with the “tip of his penis,” she told Rolling Stone.
Adult film performers Ginger Lynn and Jennifer Steele have accused Jeremy of rape both on and off porn sets. In 2003, Jeremy was questioned by police after a woman said he raped her in the back room of a strip club in Ypsilanti, Michigan.
Jeremy denied all those allegations in a statement to Rolling Stone last year.
“I have never and would never rape anyone,” he said. “All serious allegations have been investigated by police and dismissed by judges, as have most of the accusations of ‘groping.’ I have never been charged nor spent one day in court for any of this.”
In the same interview, Jeremy proclaimed that he does like to grope women.
“As for the charges of groping, I say yes, I AM A GROPER,” he said. “And by groper, I mean I get paid to show up to these shows, events, and photo shoots and touch the people and they touch me.”