LOS ANGELES—Adult performer Ramon Nomar, in his first public comments since being accused of sexual assault and battery by Nikki Benz while shooting a rough sex scene for director Tony T, has denied the allegations and expects to be exonerated.
Benz in April filed a civil lawsuit seeking $5 million in damages against Mindgeek, the parent company of Brazzers, Tony T and Nomar, alleging she was assaulted during an anal scene that was shot in December 2016 and has never been released.
Troubled by a recent account of the incident in the media, Nomar reached out to AVN to offer his recollection of the events on set.
“I have nothing against Nikki Benz,” Nomar, the multiple AVN Award-winning performer from Spain, told AVN. “I still don’t today. I think she was making a bad decision about how to deal with this. I think that humans, we are able to make mistakes. Not for that I’m going to go and sue her for defamation. I could. It’s very simple to prove that she’s lying.”
AVN reached out to Benz for comment, and the AVN Hall of Famer responded through her attorney, Dan Gilleon, who disputed Nomar’s assertion.
“All this means is Ramon won't admit he sexually assaulted Nikki,” Gilleon said. “One-hundred percent of guys who rape girls they know say the same thing. Ramon will not be able to produce a shred of evidence to back up his ‘I didn't do it’ defense.”
Benz accused the defendants of causing her to be "traumatized" from the shoot on December 17, 2016. In the complaint filed in LA County Superior Court, Benz is seeking damages for battery, assault, sexual battery, Violation of the Ralph Civil Rights Act, Violation of the Tom Bane Civil Rights Act, Gender Violence, Negligent Hiring, Supervision and Retention, Hostile Work Environment Sexual Harassment and Failure to Prevent Hostile Work Environment Sexual Harassment.
In May, the LA County District Attorney indicated he would not be filing any criminal charges based on Benz’s original police report. Mindgeek has declined comment about the matter since it issued a statement in December 2016 that it was parting ways with Tony T.
But Benz’s civil case against Mindgeek, T and Nomar has yet to be resolved. Nomar said at post time he has yet to be served with any legal documents despite being named as a defendant.
“He will be served in due course,” Gilleon said.
“If she is going to sue me and proceed with the lawsuit then we will see where we go,” said Nomar, 44, who made his adult industry debut 23 years ago. “Because if I am not proven guilty, then I’m going to sue her for defamation because she went that far with me. Until today I have no issues against her. I can forgive her, whatever. Now, when we step into a courtroom, we are looking for something else. We are looking to damage the image. And she has been damaging my image already with this thing.”
Nomar in January 2017 was initially named as a co-plaintiff along with Tony T in a defamation suit against Benz and Mindgeek, but he dropped out of that ongoing litigation, claiming he had not been consulted about adding his name to the suit in the first place.
Benz last month filed an appeal to impose an anti-SLAPP motion against Tony T in his defamation suit. SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation,” or one that is intended to censor, intimidate and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense in an effort to get them to abandon their opposition.
The California anti-SLAPP law is designed to protect citizens from suits deemed as meeting the criteria for a SLAPP. Benz’s original motion was filed in May 2017 and denied by a judge last July. If the motion is granted on appeal, it would relieve Benz of liability in the defamation suit. Tony T’s attorney Karen Tynan told AVN at post time they are working on their response to the appeal.
Nomar said the three months following Benz’s Twitter allegations were the worst of his career because no one would book him.
“Why? Because people were listening to Nikki Benz,” Nomar said. “Do you think people were calling me to ask me, ‘Ramon, how are you?’ Only two people did. After that, finally I’m back together again… and I am on my regular schedule of shooting. But during the first months after that I was losing money. I was just paying bills. And even now I don’t have anything against her. Just don’t use the people to get your own way. I don’t use people to get my ways.
“I work hard to get my ways. Don’t try to get advantage of a situation that never happened. Because we respect her. I respect her so much that even today I’m not suing her. Because I believe that she’s making a mistake by lying.”
Nomar said Benz consented to what T wanted to shoot in a video interview prior to the scene and also continued to express consent throughout the filming when she was asked if she was OK. He also said they stopped shooting several times to allow her to take bathroom breaks to clean herself and make sure she was comfortable and wanted to continue.
He said during the scene breaks that Benz “could’ve called for help” because other crew members were in the house, but “she wasn’t calling for help or anything like this.”
Benz’s attorney Gilleon said, “She did say cut several times. In fact the first time she said cut was because Ramon was hitting her breasts so hard she could not take the pain. But once the filming continued, he started back up with hitting her. She felt helpless. Neither Tony T or Ramon would listen to her pleas. She did express that she could not go on filming any further. Tony T said ‘I need 20 more minutes of footage.’ Rapists and their apologists always say something to this effect—that she didn't scream or claw or whatever. Women will often say something like, ‘If that had been me I would have ... bla bla bla’ as though anyone who hasn't been raped has any idea how they would react. I handle many, many rape cases. The truth is that, almost always, the victim submits at some level because they feel it's the safest thing to do and it's their only option.”
Nomar acknowledged the scene was “difficult” to shoot, but not unusual for him given his level of experience.
“The scene wasn’t easy. But I’m going to put it this way: that scene was the best hardcore scene that Nikki Benz has done with me, period,” Nomar suggested. “I was believing that the scene was going to be a nomination at least. Does she like it? The material that we shoot? That’s another point, because as I like to say from my point of view in the industry there is two ways of performers—the glamour performers and the hardcore performers.
“The glamour performers are those girls that are beautiful enough to do just the basics in the industry—[boy/girl scenes], easy scenes, not too much hardcore. Nikki Benz is a glam model.”
Nomar continued, “Nikki on that scene shows that she was able to do hardcore scenes. Another thing is that if she was able to handle it psychologically in the way that during the scene she was able to do it no problem. We weren’t over the limits and we were respecting her limits.
“In fact in one of the moments of the scene she was complaining because we were slapping her breast and we stop slapping her breast. We will do if somebody’s uncomfortable to make the person comfortable.
“This is a big point to put together. Who is glam? Who is hardcore? And from there, whenever a glam model wants to do a hardcore scene, a lot of them they are able to do so. Another thing is that if they like the image done during the scene. I think this is the case. Nikki was able to do a very hardcore scene—a good one, you know. And then when everything was done maybe she thought I might not like this scene out. I am able to do so but I might not like it to be out for my image.”
Nomar said it was his understanding he was being sued for “stomping” on Benz’s head. He refutes that, saying he was on his knees behind her in a posed position with his foot on her head and that at one point lost his balance by accident. He adds that move is unusual for him to do and he only does it when the director requests it as was the case in this scene.
“She accuse me of ‘stomping’ on her head. That is a thing that we do in the business, but it is not the same meaning of the word that we can see outside of the business,” he said.
“… We were in doggie. Tony T makes me a sign. But I was on my knees. So I have to reach her head with my foot. And whenever I do that I’m putting all my weight on the left just to pose my foot over her head to show some kind of ‘stomping.’ What we call ‘stomping’ in the industry. I don’t like to go heavy in a hardcore scene if my partner cannot handle heavy. And anyway you cannot go completely heavy because I am 220 pounds guy. So unfortunately, we were sweating. We were all over fluid. I slide, too, all over the couch, but I went on my side and unfortunately I press her a little too much on the head. I don’t know if we cut that or not. I think we cut.
“Because again, I stressed my concern. ‘Are you OK?’ [She said], ‘Everything is OK.’ [I said] ‘I’m sorry it was a sliding.’ And she was, ‘Oh, no worries, no worries. I’m fine.’
“[I said] ‘I’m sorry’ [and she replied], ‘No worries, everything is fine.’ So I don’t know why she sue me for ‘stomping’ her when in the same moment it happened I apologize and she say you know what Ramon, let’s keep doing this. And we keep doing that.”
He continued, “It was not intentional. And then I make sure that she was OK, if everything was OK. If she wanted to cut again, or if she needed something. She say, ‘No worries. It’s OK. Everything is OK.’ She forgave me directly. So now why a year and a half later are you coming with these allegations?”
Gilleon responded to Nomar’s account, saying, “At least he admits he hurt her, but the rest of the denial is just plain cowardly. He knows what he did. He just doesn't have the courage to admit it.”
Nomar said he would like to meet with Benz and her attorney.
“He can meet with me, but he's not going anywhere near Nikki,” Gilleon said.
“I want to personally go and talk with the lawyer and talk with her,” Nomar said. “Because I don’t think that they have a case against me. … If I tell them what I know they might have another point of view of the situation.”
