LOS ANGELES — Porn star Ron Jeremy was charged Tuesday with raping three woman and sexually assaulting a fourth in separate incidents dating back six years, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office said.
The 67-year-old actor, whose legal name is Ronald Jeremy Hyatt, was expected to make a court appearance Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles criminal court.
There was no immediate statement from Jeremy or from Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson of the Sex Crimes Division, who will be prosecuting the case. Jeremy has previously denied sexual misconduct accusations against him raised in media reports, claiming all of his sexual encounters were consensual.
Thompson is also prosecuting convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, who faces several sexual assault counts in Los Angeles County after being convicted of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape and sentenced to 23 years in New York.
Jeremy will be arraigned on three counts of forcible rape and forcible penetration with a foreign object, and one count each of forcible oral copulation and sexual battery, the D.A.’s office said in a statement.
If convicted, Jeremy faces up to 90 years in state prison, according to a criminal complaint released Tuesday.
The oldest case is from May 2014, when Jeremy allegedly raped a 25-year-old woman at a home in West Hollywood, according to the release.
Jeremy is also accused of sexually assaulting two women, ages 33 and 46, on separate occasions in 2017 at a bar in West Hollywood. And he is accused of forcibly raping a 30-year-old woman in July 2019 at the same bar.
Nicknamed “The Hedgehog” because of his body hair, Jeremy was a teacher from Queens, New York, whose career in porn was launched when a girlfriend sent nude photos of him to “Playgirl.”
Since then, Jeremy has appeared in nearly 2,000 X-rated movies as well as a number of mainstream movies, a saga he recounted in his memoir “The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz: Horny Women, Hollywood Nights & The Rise of the Hedgehog!”
One of the porn industry's best known performers, Jeremy is also listed in Guinness Book of World Records for "Most Appearances in Adult Films."
Andrew Blankstein reported from Los Angeles and Corky Siemaszko reported from New Jersey.
