This would be the late 80s, at the beginning of the porn star’s heyday, and he was already looking rebellious. That was kind of his point, I figured. It was there so that every man, no matter how insufferable, could get his erection a little closer to the dream of being able to screw all the desirable women who came into his orbit. He was there to assure everyone that there was no such thing as too low a level. Channel 4’s two-part documentary Porn King: The Rise and Fall of Ron Jeremy gives voice to some of the women who have been the object of his attentions, on and off set, including some who – according to their living testimony – raped. Jeremy is in jail awaiting, if deemed medically fit by experts, to stand trial on 34 charges. They include 12 rapes, including of a 15-year-old girl in 2004, violent oral sex, penetration with a foreign object and sodomy, the latter allegedly taking place in 2020. Jeremy denies the charges. The documentary follows the harrowing, depressing pattern we’ve become familiar with through Surviving R Kelly, Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, countless programs about Jeffrey Epstein and most of Netflix’s true crime output. A predatory man uses his charm/wealth/power/a combination of these to abuse the women around him, either ignored or permitted by those employed or otherwise benefiting from his position. He remains unchallenged for decades while women seek safety to talk and then struggle to be heard and taken seriously. The problems women face in such situations are, of course, multiplied immeasurably when they are women in the porn industry. The idea that if someone consents to sex once, they have essentially consented to it forever and with anyone dies especially hard when the woman has sex for a living. It does not hold up under the slightest scrutiny, but even the slightest examination of endemic prejudice is always in short supply. Former adult film star Ginger Lynn says Jeremy raped her in 1983 after she and her then-boyfriend refused to let him take part in a sex scene they were filming earlier that day. The next day, on her 21st birthday, he was used as a last-minute stand-in for another sex scene with her, although it had always been on her “No” list. “I didn’t want to fuck Ron – he was old, hairy, smelly,” she recalls. “And he thought he was funny.” Born and bred in Bristol, Lianne Young moved to the US in her early 20s at the turn of the millennium to work in the porn industry. “I knew I would never do a scene with Ron Jeremy,” he says. “Man is grotesque.” She describes chatting with people at a party when he came up behind her, pushed her over a table and thrust his penis into her. It all took about four or five seconds. Since then, she says, she has been living rent-free. The silence of the spectators remains deafening. There are reports of other attacks as well. Podcaster Siouxsie Q describes a particularly violent one in which she escaped in bloody underwear after suggesting they go somewhere quieter for an interview he’d requested. His defenders, including the alarmingly vulgar “porn pastor” Craig Gross, adduce extenuating circumstances. There are “blurred lines” in an industry where you are expected to touch and be touched by the fans you meet. There are years of worship clouding Jeremy’s judgment. Or they just insist that the “dumbball” they know is just not capable of any unwanted behavior. Several of them wonder why Lynn worked with Jeremy on more than one occasion after the alleged rape. “She did a stupid thing” when she was “trying to get closure,” he says – an impulse that anyone who has tried desperately to normalize a terrible thing will recognise. The documentary gives fair time and weight to each side and leaves it up to the viewer to decide which they find more convincing. The women involved in the case against him waver between rage and weariness. Beneath most interviews with others seeps out anger of a different kind – occasionally, as with the pastor when he growls “Let me finish the conversation” at the interviewer, breaking the surface. Depressing and upsetting, yes. But also scary. And we move on.
