Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter is facing a new claim he raped a 17-year-old girl on a bus during the boy band’s Black & Blue worldwide concert tour in 2001.
Accuser Shannon “Shay” Ruth filed a sexual battery lawsuit in Clark County, Nevada, on Thursday claiming Carter picked her out of a line of fans seeking autographs at the Tacoma Dome in Washington that night and invited her to join 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 dubbed “VIP juice” that tasted alcoholic, ordered her to get on her knees and then pulled down his pants and insisted she perform oral sex on him. She alleges he instructed her on how to proceed even though she was crying.
Now 39, Ruth alleges Carter, who faced a similar allegation in the past that was not prosecuted, led her to a bed, “pushed” her down and forcefully removed her pants when she resisted. Carter then allegedly attempted to orally copulate Ruth as she “begged him to stop,” the lawsuit obtained by Rolling Stone states.
“Carter told her to ‘Shh!’ as he laid on top of her and said it would be our ‘special secret,'” the filing continues, alleging that Carter then vaginally penetrated Ruth.
“The last 21 years have been filled with pain, confusion, frustration, shame, and self-harm that are a direct result of Nick Carter raping me,” Ruth said at a press conference with her lawyer Mark Boskovich in Beverly Hills on Thursday.
“Even though I’m autistic and live with cerebral palsy, I believe nothing has affected me more …than what Nick Carter did to me,” Ruth said, struggling to hold back tears.
She claimed Carter turned “nasty 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’d turn people against me because he was Nick Carter and had the power to wreck my life.”
“I felt like I had nowhere to turn,” she said. “I truly believed if I told anyone, I would go to jail.”
Representatives for Carter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone.
“This accusation is categorically false, Nick is focusing on his family and mourning the death of his brother,” an unidentified source close to the singer told TMZ, which first reported the lawsuit.
The lawsuit comes after Melissa Schuman, a former member of teen-pop group Dream, stepped forward in 2017 and accused Carter of sexually assaulting her in 2003, around the time they were shooting the 2004 made-for-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 allegation was outside the 10-year statute of limitations.
In a blog post that’s no longer active, Schuman said Carter invited her and a friend to his Santa Monica residence for a “casual hangout.” Schuman said she also was a virgin at the time and that Carter allegedly poured shots and then took her to a 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 the light back on because he told me he wanted to look at me,” she wrote.
“I am shocked and saddened by Ms. Schuman’s accusations. Melissa never expressed to 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 that I am hearing about these accusations, nearly two decades later. It is contrary to my nature and everything I hold dear to intentionally cause someone discomfort or harm.”
