Nick Carter has filed a countersuit against the woman who made sexual assault charges against him over 20 years ago, as well as another woman who made similar allegations.
According to court papers obtained by ET from Clark County, Nevada, former fan Shannon Ruth is suing the Backstreet Boys vocalist for a sexual assault she claims to have suffered at the hands of the band when she was a teenager. The musician is also suing Melissa Schuman and her father, Jerome Schuman, for $2.3 million, claiming that the pair have been trying to extort money from them for years, resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue for BSB.
Ruth’s attorney, Mark Boskovich, released the following statement to ET: “Why should we put our faith in Nick Carter today when he has a long history of sexually abusing women? The jury will deliberate after considering the facts.”
Carter is convinced that Ruth and the Schumans have been planning against him for a long time. According to the documents Ruth filed against Carter in December, this “is the conclusion of an approximate five-year plot concocted by Counter-Defendants to harass, defame, and extort Carter.”
The singer claims that “The #MeToo movement was instrumental in the launch of this campaign, which began in November 2017 when Counter-Defendant Melissa Schuman produced a sensationalist blog post in which she falsely claimed that Carter had sexually assaulted her in 2003.
Schuman and her father “were all too happy to take a groveling Ruth into their plot, once she apologizes for what she did to Carter “per Carter.
Ruth said that Carter sexually assaulted her in February of 2001, and she made a formal complaint against him in December. Carter has denied the charges without reservation. The singer’s attorney Michael Holtz told ET that the allegations were “legally meritless” and “completely false.” The alleged incident occurred over 20 years ago. The lawyer continued by saying, “Over time, Ms. [Shannon] Ruth has been strongly encouraged to fabricate claims against Nick. This is a PR stunt concocted by a dishonest lawyer, and the courts will quickly see through it.”
After their gig in Tacoma, Washington, Ruth said that Carter sexually assaulted her on the tour bus in the bathroom and his bedroom. ABC decided not to run the Backstreet Boys’ holiday special, “A Very Backstreet Holiday,” because of the accusations.
In his rebuttal, Carter calls Ruth “weak and incredibly sensitive, craving attention and ready to fit in.” He claims the Schumans “groomed and coached Ruth, pushing her to extend her original allegation of being mistreated at the hands of a third party, to being physically attacked at the particular hands of Carter, and, last but not least, to being sexually abused by Carter.”
After waiting “years and years to report it,” Ruth and Melissa Schuman finally came out with their complaints against the 43-year-old musician, and the singer claims that independent investigations into both occurrences “resulted in no charges being brought against Carter.”
Among the charges made by Carter is that the Schumans “preyed on Aaron, who was fighting mental health difficulties and drug addiction and exploited his unsettling behavior (a private Carter family matter) to further their defamatory campaign against Carter.”
Next, the experts went on to detail Aaron Carter’s extensive history of mental health issues, including his many personas, schizophrenia, acute anxiety disorder, and manic depression. Xanax, Seroquel, Gapapentin, Hydroxyzine, Trazodone, and Omazeprazole were only some of the drugs given and taken by Aaron to treat his symptoms. On November 5, Aaron Carter’s funeral was held. He was 34.
Nick requests a total payout of $2,350,000.