Advertisement

Rovier Carrington, Who Sued Viacom Execs, Charged With Faking Sex Abuse Claims

Rovier Carrington, a self-described Hollywood “it boy,” has been charged with perjury in connection with a salacious sex abuse lawsuit he filed against Viacom and its executives in 2018.

Carrington was arrested Tuesday on allegations that he had fabricated emails to support the suit, which was ultimately dismissed. In the suit, Carrington accused former MTV executive Brian Graden of luring him into a sexual relationship with false promises of stardom, and also accused Brad Grey, the late CEO and chairman of Paramount Pictures, of rape. He also claimed to have been blacklisted at Viacom, and that his idea for a dating reality show had been stolen.

More from Variety

The lawsuit unraveled after a forensic examination of his phone and email accounts failed to turn up the original emails. The defense lawyers in the case accused Carrington of fabricating 39 emails in total.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla ordered the suit dismissed with prejudice in October 2019, and later ordered Carrington to pay the defendants more than $600,000 to cover their attorneys’ fees. In an order, Failla said that Carrington had forced the court and defense counsel to undertake a “15-month saga” to investigate the claims and uncover the provenance of the emails.

Carrington was represented by a few different lawyers in the civil case, represented himself at one point, failed to show up for hearings, tried and failed to dismiss the case on his own without prejudice, and tried and failed to get a change of venue. He also claimed that his emails had been hacked, and that he had thrown away the phone that contained the original copies. The email account purportedly used to send the emails was also deleted the day after the amended complaint was filed.

The judge issued an injunction barring Carrington from bringing further suits, and at one point threatened him with incarceration for flouting that order.

“Carrington has now twice engaged in a pattern of filing outrageous claims, fabricating evidence, attempting to escape the consequences of such fabrication, and then refusing to appear in court,” Failla wrote in an order in September 2020.

Carrington was charged in federal court in New York with one count of perjury, which carries a maximum potential sentence of five years. He appeared before a federal judge in Los Angeles on Tuesday, and was released on a $15,000 bond.

Best of Variety

Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.