, innumerable programmes about Jeffrey Epstein and most of Netflix’s true-crime output. A predatory man uses his charm/wealth/power/a combination thereof to abuse the women around him, either ignored or enabled by those in his employ, or otherwise benefiting from his position. He goes unchallenged for decades while the women look for the safety to speak up, and then must fight to be heard and taken seriously.
Bristol-born and bred 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,” she says. “The man is grotesque.” She describes chatting to people at an industry party when he came up behind her, pushed her over a table and shoved his penis inside her. It all took about four or five seconds. He has lived, she says, rent-free in her head ever since. The silence of the onlookers remains deafening.
His defenders, including unsettlingly vulpine “porn pastor” Craig Gross, adduce mitigating evidence. There are “blurred lines” in an industry where touching and being touched by the fans you meet is expected. There are the years of adulation clouding Jeremy’s judgment. Or they simply insist that the “goofball” they know just isn’t capable of any untoward behaviour.