Dawn Images

American pop band Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter is facing new sexual assault allegations in a lawsuit that claims he raped a woman twice while they were involved in a relationship in 2005. He has denied the claims.

According to Variety, a woman named Laura Penly filed a civil complaint in Nevada last week, accusing Carter of forcing her into sexual acts in 2004, when she was 19 and the singer was 25. Penly claimed that the two engaged in consensual sex thrice, after which Carter became aggressive and “dismissed” her refusal to have sex, telling her that “the only reason she was there was to have sex.”

Penly alleged that the singer “failed to use protection” during the incident, subsequently causing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, including HPV. She further claimed that this led to her contracting cervical cancer later in life.

In her complaint, Penly alleged that the singer assaulted her again, approximately two months after the first instance of rape. She stated that he apologised to her and asked to see her again, only to isolate her in a bedroom and rape her a second time.

In a statement shared with Variety, Liane K Wakayama and Dale Hayes, Jr, attorneys for Carter, said the lawsuit is “just more of the same nonsense from the gang of conspirators and their lawyers who continue to abuse the justice system to try to ruin Nick Carter.”

“It’s drawn from the same predictable playbook — lie in wait for decades until Mr Carter is celebrating a professional milestone, then hide behind litigation privilege to make utterly false claims in an attempt to inflict maximum damage on Nick and his family.”

They continued, “Nick does not recall ever even meeting Laura Penly. He certainly never had any romantic or sexual relationship with her. Ever. The person making these claims has a documented history of financial and legal trouble, has filed for bankruptcy and has been sued for fraud — and whatever health challenges she may have faced have absolutely nothing to do with Nick. Not only will we fight this, we will be seeking sanctions against her legal team for enabling this frivolous action.”

Carter and his late brother Aaron are the subjects of a recent two-part documentary detailing the singers’ rise to fame and the impact it had on their family.

The lawsuit filed by Penly is the fourth sexual assault lawsuit filed against Carter, Variety reported. In 2022, Shannon Ruth, a woman with cerebral palsy lodged a civil lawsuit against the singer, claiming she was raped as a teenager by him. The suit alleged that Carter also abused three other women.

In 2018, prosecutors declined to file charges against Carter after a singer reported last year that she had been raped in 2003. Melissa Schuman of the group Dream was 18 at the time, meaning the statute of limitations for prosecution had expired in 2013, Los Angeles County prosecutors said.