Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter faces third sexual assault lawsuit

A third woman has filed a sexual assault lawsuit against Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter.

On Monday (August 28) an unnamed accuser, who used the initials A.R., filed a lawsuit in Las Vegas claiming that she was assaulted multiple times when she was 15.

She claimed the incidents happened multiple times on a yacht and once on the back of a tour bus in 2003 when Carter was 23, according to Billboard.

In the lawsuit, she alleged that Carter “knowingly provided alcohol and drugs” and assaulted her “despite her repeated refusals and requests for him to stop”.

She also claimed the incident left her with sexually-transmitted diseases and “severe emotional distress, physical anguish, intimacy issues, and other complex trauma”.

“The impacts of Carter’s sexual abuse are ceaseless, causing plaintiff severe emotional distress, physical anguish, intimacy issues, and other complex trauma,” the accuser’s lawyers wrote.

In a response statement, Carter’s lawyers described the new accusations as “ridiculous,” saying they had been investigated and rejected as “meritless” at the time.

“Now she’s at it yet again,” Carter’s lawyer, Dale Hayes Jr, said in the statement. “But repeating the same false allegations in a new legal complaint doesn’t make them any more true. Nick is looking forward to the evidence being presented and the truth about these malicious schemes coming to light.”

The first incident was alleged to have occurred in August 2003, when Carter “directed” A.R. – who said she was intoxicated and that she did not consent – to go into the cabin of his yacht and convinced her into oral sex and he “penetrated her vagina with his genitals”.

Another alleged assault took place on the yacht a month after, during which Carter allegedly “enticed three other men” to watch them have sex.

A.R. and her mother reportedly went to the police in Pennsylvania where she lived later that year.

In a statement on Wednesday (August 30), Carter’s lawyers claimed that police concluded that A.R. “could herself have been charged with a crime” over the incident. They also claimed she was “threatened with criminal charges for filing a false police report” over a separate matter.

A.R.’s attorney, John Kawai, said in a statement: “Abusers can take notice that just because they avoided prison doesn’t mean they don’t have to answer to a jury for their actions.”

The allegations against Carter follow a civil lawsuit filed last year, stating that he allegedly raped a 17-year-old fan on his tour bus in 2001. Shannon Ruth, now aged 40, claimed that Carter handed her a drink which she believed contained a mix of cranberry juice and alcohol, before attacking her on the tour bus.

In April of this year, Carter was also being sued for sexual assault and battery by singer Melissa Schuman.

The singer strongly denies the accusations and is countersuing both women for defamation.

For help, advice or more information regarding sexual harassment, assault and rape in the UK, visit the Rape Crisis charity website. In the US, visit RAINN.

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