Backstreet Boy Nick Carter was confronted with sexual battery allegations late last year, when Shannon Ruth filed a lawsuit seeking damages for an alleged assault that occurred in 2001 when she was 17 years old. Carter has vehemently denied the claims and is now fighting back, as he filed a countersuit against both Ruth and Melissa Schuman — who also claimed she was sexually assaulted by the singer in the early 2000s — saying the two women have been involved in a conspiracy against the boy-bander.
Nick Carter is countersuing for $2.35 million in damages, per ET, with the singer claiming that Shannon Ruth’s December lawsuit is the result of “an approximate five-year conspiracy orchestrated by Counter-Defendants to harass, defame and extort Carter." He further said Melissa Schuman and her father Jerome Shuman have been trying to extort money from him for years and caused millions of dollars in lost revenue for him and the other members of the Backstreet Boys. According to the court documents:
[T]he campaign was launched and bolstered by the #MeToo movement, beginning at its dawn, when Counter-Defendant Melissa Schuman posted a salacious blog entry in November 2017, falsely asserting that she had been sexually assaulted by Carter in 2003.
Nick Carter’s countersuit says Shannon Ruth was “vulnerable and highly impressionable,” and accuses the Schumans of recruiting her into their alleged scheme. The countersuit continues:
[Melissa and Jerome Shuman] groomed and coached Ruth, coaxing her to inflate her initial claim of being abused at the hands of a third-party, to being physically abused at the specific hands of Carter, and, finally, to being sexually assaulted by Carter.
According to the lawsuit Shannon Ruth filed in December, Nick Carter is accused of inviting 17-year-old Ruth onto his band’s tour bus in 2001 and possibly giving her alcohol, before he allegedly assaulted her in the bus’ bathroom and then on a bed. She said she contracted HPV afterward.
Shannon Ruth’s attorney, Mark Boskovich, responded to the Backstreet Boy’s lawsuit in a statement to ET, asking:
Why should Nick Carter be believed with his long history of abusing females? A jury will weigh the evidence and decide.
That history includes the 2018 claim made by Melissa Schuman, a member of the 2000s girl group Dream, who came forward with sexual assault accusations against Nick Carter from an alleged incident from the early aughts. In that instance, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office refused to press charges against the Backstreet Boy, per TMZ, because per California law at the time, the statute of limitations for an alleged crime committed in 2003 expired in 2013.
Nick Carter pointed out in his court filings that independent investigations into both women’s claims “resulted in no charges being filed against Carter.”
Shannon Ruth’s lawsuit was filed in December, just over a month after Nick Carter’s younger brother Aaron Carter, with whom Nick had a complicated relationship, was found dead at age 34. It was also just a week before the Backstreet Boys were scheduled to air their first Christmas special, A Very Backstreet Holiday, on ABC. The program was subsequently pulled from the network’s broadcast schedule.
