'It Felt Like Rape': Porn Performer August Ames's On-Set Allegations Emerge a Year After Her Death (Jezebel)

Read the full article by Tracy Clark-Flory at Jezebel.com 

Porn performer August Ames died by suicide in December of 2017, but late last week, her Twitter account, which is now run by her husband Kevin Moore, sent out a message. Using her birth name, rather than stage name, it read, “Mercedes [sic] own words on her experience working with Markus Dupree.” Attached were screenshots of text messages Ames had reportedly sent to a friend several weeks before her death, along with two photos of extensive bruises on her body.

“The guy was way too rough with me,” read one of the texts, in reference to a shoot Ames had done with a male performer the day before. “He was dragging me around and choked me with my panties, slamming my head down on the table and was just WAY too rough and the scene didn’t even call for it. I was so enraged that when he pulled me down to kiss him I just spat in his face.” Her texts went on to allege that her scene partner was male performer Markus Dupree and that she “was literally in panic mode so I froze and didn’t say no or stop,” and that she “just wanted it to be over.” The shoot, wrote Ames, “was totally unprofessional and I wanted to die.” (Jezebel reached out to Dupree for comment but has not yet received a response. We’ll update this post if we hear back.)

The revelation of Ames’s texts—first reported in British journalist Jon Ronson’s new podcast The Last Days of August—follows several earlier, and in some cases eerily similar, allegations of on-set abuse within the adult industry, and it raises now-familiar questions about protecting porn performers’ rights. In 2015, several allegations of on-set abuse were made against popular porn performer James Deen. Then, in 2016, performer Nikki Benz alleged abuse during a shoot for the porn production company Brazzers. Early last year, performers Leigh Raven and Riley Nixon published a YouTube video detailing allegations of abuse during two different porn shoots. (In all cases, the accused denied the allegations.) Just recently, performer Lily Adams accused director Stills by Alan of sexual assault.