LOS ANGELES _ Los Angeles County prosecutors filed 20 more counts of sexual assault and groping against Ron Jeremy on Monday, after dozens of additional women contacted law enforcement following the adult film star's arrest in late June.
Jeremy, who has pleaded not guilty to allegations that he sexually assaulted four women in West Hollywood between 2014 and 2019, now faces a total of 28 counts of sexual violence in L.A. County. That initial court appearance triggered a deluge of claims against the 67-year-old.
The amended complaint was filed during a Monday morning court appearance to schedule Jeremy's preliminary hearing, according to Ricardo Santiago, a spokesman for the county district attorney's office. A copy of the complaint was not immediately available.
Just three days after Jeremy was initially charged, Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson said prosecutors had received an additional 25 allegations of misconduct involving Jeremy, 13 of which had occurred in L.A. County. Since then, six additional women who worked in the adult entertainment industry have told the Los Angeles Times that Jeremy had raped or abused them.
In July, a law enforcement official told the Times that the L.A. County Sheriff's Department had received 30 new allegations of forcible rape and groping against Jeremy involving incidents that took place in L.A. County since 2000. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.
Calls to Jeremy's defense attorney, Stu Goldfarb, were not immediately returned.
In the original criminal complaint filed in June, prosecutors charged Jeremy with forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual battery. Investigators said he had prowled the Sunset Strip and leveraged his celebrity status to gain access to women, who he then took advantage of while they were drunk.
Allegations of groping and sexual assault have hovered around Jeremy since 2017. In the span of a few months, a video detailing past sexual abuse claims against Jeremy gained more than 200,000 views on YouTube, and Rolling Stone published allegations of groping and violent rape levied by a dozen women. The allegations made Jeremy a pariah in the industry that had launched him to fame.
