Backstreet Boy Nick Carter faced sexual harassment allegations late last year when Shannon Root filed a damages claim for an alleged assault that occurred in 2001 when she was 17. Carter has categorically denied the allegations and is now resisting, as he has filed a counterclaim against Ruth and Melissa Schuman, who also claimed she was sexually assaulted by the singer in the early 2000s, saying the two women were involved in a conspiracy against the boy band.
Nick Carter is filing a $2.35 million counterclaim for damages, according to ET, with the singer claiming that Shannon Root’s December lawsuit is the result of “approximately a five-year conspiracy organized by the defendants to harass, slander and extort Carter.” Melissa Schuman and her father Jerome Schuman tried to extort money from him for years, as a result of which he and other members of the Backstreet Boys lost millions of dollars.According to court documents:
[E] the campaign has been launched and supported by the #MeToo movement since its dawn, when counter-defendant Melissa Schuman posted an obscene blog entry in November 2017 falsely claiming she was sexually assaulted by Carter in 2003.
Nick Carter’s counterclaim states that Shannon Root was “vulnerable and very impressionable,” and the Schumans are accused of recruiting her into their alleged scheme. The counterclaim continues:
[Melissa and Jerome Schuman] groomed and coached Ruth, coaxing her to inflate her initial claim of third-party violence, of physical abuse by Carter’s specific hands, and finally of sexual abuse by Carter.
According to a lawsuit filed by Shannon Root in December, Nick Carter is accused of inviting 17-year-old Ruth on his band’s tour bus in 2001 and possibly giving her alcohol before he allegedly assaulted her in the bus toilet and then on the bed. . She said she subsequently contracted HPV.
Shannon Root’s attorney, Mark Boskovich, responded to the Backstreet Boys’ lawsuit in a statement to ET, asking:
Why should we believe Nick Carter with his long history of abuse of women? The jury will weigh the evidence and make a decision.
This story includes a 2018 statement made by Melissa Schuman, a member of the 2000s girl group Dream, who came forward with sexual assault allegations against Nick Carter in connection with an alleged incident in the early noughties. In that case, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to press charges against Backstreet Boy, according to TMZ, because under California law at the time, the statute of limitations on the alleged crime committed in 2003 expired in 2013.
Nick Carter indicated in his court documents that an independent investigation into the claims of both women “did not lead to charges against Carter.”
Shannon Root’s lawsuit was filed in December, just over a month after Nick Carter’s younger brother Aaron Carter, with whom Nick had a difficult relationship, was found dead at the age of 34. The first Christmas edition of A Very Backstreet Holiday on ABC. The program was subsequently dropped from the network’s broadcast schedule.
