Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys has been accused of sexually assaulting a female fan in 2001.
Shannon “Shay” Ruth filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that she was invited onto Carter’s tour bus following a concert in Tacoma, Washington. The "I Want It That Way" singer allegedly gave her a “red-coloured drink” that Ruth said tasted like it contained alcohol. She was 17 at the time.
According to the lawsuit, Carter allegedly took Ruth into the bathroom, pulled down his pants and demanded that she perform oral sex on him. She claimed she was crying.
Carter then allegedly moved to a bed on the bus, “pushed” her down and forcefully removed her pants before allegedly attempted to perform oral sex on her. Ruth claimed she “begged him to stop.”
Carter is also accused of penetrating Ruth, who said she was a virgin at the time. She claimed she contracted HPV.
“After he raped me, I remember him calling me a ‘retarded b**ch’ and grabbing me and leaving bruises on my arm,” Ruth said at a press conference that was streamed on Facebook.
She said Carter told her that he had “the power to wreck my life” if she reported the incident.
“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, now 39, said. “Even though I’m autistic and live with cerebral palsy, I believe that nothing has affected me more or had a more lasting impact on my life than what Nick Carter did and said to me.”
Ruth’s lawyer Mark J. Boskovich said Carter “has a long history of abusing women” and said his client is “determined to bring Carter to justice.”
Carter has not been criminally charged and the allegations in the lawsuit have not been tested in court.
In a statement to media outlets, Carter's lawyer Michael Holtz called the allegations "not only legally meritless but also entirely untrue." He added: "Unfortunately, for several years now, Ms. Ruth has been manipulated into making false allegations about Nick – and those allegations have changed repeatedly and materially over time. No one should be fooled by a press stunt orchestrated by an opportunistic lawyer – there is nothing to this claim whatsoever, which we have no doubt the courts will quickly realize."
In 2017, singer Melissa Schuman claimed in a blog post that Carter sexually assaulted her in a bathroom at his home in Santa Monica when she was 18 and he was 22. The two had worked together on a TV movie.
“I told him that I was a virgin and I didn’t want to have sex,” she wrote in a blog post at the time. “I said it over and over again.”
Carter was never charged (prosecutors said a 10-year statute of limitations had passed) and Carter said in a statement anything they did together was consensual.
“This is the first that I am hearing about these accusations, nearly two decades later,” he said in 2017. “It is contrary to my nature and everything I hold dear to intentionally cause someone discomfort or harm.”
Singer Aaron Carter, who died last month, frequently alleged that his older brother had sexually assaulted woman. In a series of tweets on Sept. 19, 2019, Aaron compared Nick to Jeffrey Epstein (the late sex trafficker), called him “a serial rapist" and urged someone to make an “R. Kelly-type documentary” about him.
Aaron tweeted: “Hes (sic) bullying these women with power and money … Nick cannot stop his own reckoning.”