Member of the Backstreet Boys Nick Carter is facing new charges that he raped a 17-year-old girl on a bus during a 2001 concert tour by boy band Black & Blue.
Prosecutor Shannon “Shay” Ruth filed a sexual assault lawsuit Thursday in Clark County, Nevada, alleging that Carter picked her out of a line of autograph-seeking fans at the Tacoma Dome in Washington and invited her to joins him on his tour bus when she was an unsuspecting virgin.
Ruth, who says she lives with autism and cerebral palsy, claims Carter, who would have been 21 at the time, fed her a pink drink called “VIP juice” that tasted like alcohol, ordered her to kneel down , and pulled down his pants. and insisted that she perform oral sex with him. She claims he was telling her how to carry on even though she was crying.
Ruth, now 39, claims Carter, who faced a similar charge in the past but was not prosecuted, took her to the bed, “pushed” her down and forcibly removed her trousers when she resisted. Carter then allegedly tried to perform oral sex with Ruth when she “begged him to stop,” the suit won Rolling Stone countries.
“Carter told her ‘Shhh!’ when he laid on top of her and said it would be our ‘special secret,'” the filing continues, which alleges that Carter vaginally penetrated Ruth.
“The last 21 years have been filled with pain, confusion, frustration, shame and self-harm as a direct result of being raped by Nick Carter,” Ruth said at a news conference with her attorney Mark Boskovich on Thursday in Beverly Hills.
“Even though I’m autistic and live with cerebral palsy, I don’t think anything has hurt me more… than what Nick Carter did to me,” Ruth said, fighting back tears.
She claimed Carter became “horrible and threatening” when she told him she was going to report the incident. “After he raped me, I remember him calling me a ‘retarded bitch’ and grabbing me and leaving bruises on my arm,” she said.
“Carter tried to scare me into silence,” she claimed, saying he told her “he was going to turn people against me because he was Nick Carter and he had the power to destroy my life.”
“I felt like I had nowhere to turn,” she said. “I truly believed I would go to jail if I told anyone.”
Carter denied the allegations in a statement released by his attorney Thursday night.
“This allegation about an incident that allegedly occurred more than 20 years ago is not only legally unfounded, but completely false,” attorney Michael Holtz wrote. “Unfortunately, for several years Ms. Ruth has been manipulated into making false allegations about Nick – and these allegations have changed many times and significantly over time. No one should be fooled by a journalistic stunt orchestrated by an opportunistic lawyer – there is nothing about this claim that we have no doubt the courts will quickly recognize.”
The lawsuit comes after Melissa Schuman, a former member of the teen-pop group Dream, came forward in 2017 and accused Carter of sexual assault in 2003, around the time they were filming the 2004 TV movie “The Hollow.” when she was 18 years old.
Los Angeles County prosecutors investigated Schuman’s claim and ultimately declined to file a case, saying the charge fell outside the 10-year statute of limitations.
In a blog post that is no longer active, Schuman said Carter invited her and a friend to his Santa Monica residence for a “casual hangout.” Schuman said she was also a virgin at the time and that Carter allegedly injected her and then took her to the bathroom, where he performed oral sex on her over her protests.
“I told him to stop, but he didn’t. So I turned off the bathroom light so I wouldn’t see anything. He kept turning on the light because he told me he wanted to look at me,” she wrote.
“I am shocked and saddened by Ms Schuman’s allegations. “Melissa never told me while we were together or at any time since that anything we did was not consensual,” Carter said in a statement to Rolling Stone at the time. “This is the first time I have heard of these allegations, almost two decades later. It is against my nature and against all that I hold dear to intentionally cause discomfort or harm to anyone.”
A new lawsuit filed Thursday also alleges that three women, identified only as Jane Does, have accused Carter of similar behavior. She claims that Jane Doe 2 was a 15-year-old girl at the time of the alleged abuse in 2003 and says she contracted HPV from Carter, which Ruth also stated.
Jane Doe 1 makes similar allegations of abuse in 2003, and Jane Doe 3 claims she was sexually assaulted by Carter in 2006 at a house party in Key West, Florida, the filing states.
Boskovich said at a news conference that the lawsuit is withholding the women’s names “to preserve their privacy until they are ready to speak.” He said his team interviewed the women.
Ruth’s civil suit seeks monetary damages for past and future pain and suffering and punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial.
