Is 2020 not gross enough for you yet? Well, buckle up, folks, because this year just got a whole lot grosser. Porn legend Ron Jeremy was originally jailed back in June with bail set at $6.6 million as he awaited trial for multiple charges of various types of sexual assault. This week, the 67-year-old has been dick-slapped, if you will, with 20 new counts of sexual misconduct, as reported by multiple news outlets on Monday.
The 20 new charges come from 13 different plaintiffs, and “bring the number of his alleged victims to 17 ranging from 15-54 years old,” reported The New York Times. And, combined, they could carry a sentence of up to 250 years in prison if Jeremy is found guilty of them all.
At a court appearance on Monday morning to schedule his preliminary trial, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office amended the original complaints against Jeremy to allow for the new charges. In addition to the eight existing counts on which he was being held, Jeremy “now faces 28 criminal counts in L.A. County,” wrote James Queally of the Los Angeles Times.
The charges span a 16-year time period, during which it is alleged that Jeremy routinely “prowled the Sunset Strip and leveraged his celebrity status to gain access to women, whom he then took advantage of while they were drunk,” Queally reported.
The full list of charges against him stands thusly, according to CNN: “Six counts of sexual battery by restraint, five counts of forcible rape, three counts of forcible oral copulation, two count of forcible penetration by a foreign object and one count each of sodomy, assault with intent to commit rape, penetration by a foreign object on an unconscious or sleeping victim and lewd conduct with a 15-year-old girl.” That last—a new low that even amidst these utterly reprehensible allegations—allegest that Jeremy sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl at a party north of L.A. in 2004, reported The New York Times.
After his June appearance in court made headlines around the world, dozens of women from around the United States came forward with their own stories of misconduct. Since then, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has interviewed “50 additional women who made allegations against Jeremy,” Lt. John Adams of the agency’s special victims bureau told the Los Angeles Times. “Eleven of those women are now part of the amended criminal complaint,” said Adams, but those whose allegations didn’t make the cut can still testify against Jeremy in court as “prior bad acts witnesses,” who can back up the plaintiffs’ complaints by establishing that his criminal behavior is part of a long-standing—extremely gross—pattern.
Jeremy has pled not guilty to the new charges, his attorney, Stuart Goldfarb, told the media. He is scheduled to appear in court again on October 28.
