Nick Carter rape accuser shares horrific particulars of sexual assault

Nick and Aaron Carter were once two of the most popular and successful pop stars of all time – but behind the screaming fans, fawning girls, and chart-topping hits is a dark and twisted tale riddled with accusations of assault, abuse, and drug use. 

Now, a new documentary, Fallen Idols: Nick And Aaron Carter, which premiered on ID and Max on May 27 and will continue to air on May 28, lifts the lid on the dark side of the brothers’ fame, laying bare a horrifying series of accusations made against Nick, and the gaping rift the allegations caused in his relationship with his brother. 

The four-part series features on-camera interviews focusing on the sexual misconduct allegations made against Nick Carter, 44, by three women: former popstar Melissa Schuman, Ashley Repp and Shannon ‘Shay’ Ruth. Nick has vehemently denied these claims. 

The series also delves into Nick’s fractured relationship with late brother Aaron, who died aged 34 in 2022, and the pressure put on them to support their family, and the devastating effects that drugs and alcohol had on the Carters.

Nick’s ex-girlfriend Kaya Jones and Aaron’s former fiancée Melanie Martin also appear in the series, shedding light on the dark sides of the brothers’ lives.

The series begins with Schuman, 39, who was a member of the ’90s girl band Dream, recounting her interactions with Nick, whom she had accused of sexual assault in 2017. 

She recalled Nick’s people reaching out to her label in 2001, saying he had expressed interest in dating her – but she said no, as she was seeing someone else at the time.

After she parted ways with Dream, Schuman transitioned into acting, landing parts in Love Doesn’t Cost A Thing and The Hollow. 

After landing the role in The Hollow in 2003, she found out Nick was attached.

Schuman, who was 18 at the time, recalled Carter – who was in his mid-20s- being ‘playful’ on set.

‘Nick [had asked], “What are you doing on our off days? You should come round and play video games with us,”‘ she recalled, saying she would go and asking if she could bring a friend.

‘He seemed like a regular guy and I was looking forward to getting to know more about him.’

However, what was set to be an innocent hangout descended into a moment that ‘completely changed’ the course of her life. 

Schuman recalled being picked up in an SUV in Santa Monica before being driven to Nick’s apartment, stopping at a liquor store where he told his friend to buy alcohol.

The boy band member made everyone drinks before he took Schuman to his office to listen to some of his new music. While in the office, he tapped his knee, asking her to sit on his lap.

‘At some point he then pulls me into him and he’s kissing me – we’re kissing,’ she recounted. 

‘He then takes my hand and takes me into the adjacent bathroom and shuts the door.’

She then said he started unbuttoning her pants and started to perform oral sex on her, despite her protests.

‘I kept turning off the lights so I didn’t have to look at myself but he kept turning it back on and telling me he wanted to look at me, which was even more humiliating,’ she cried.

Schuman said she was ‘completely paralyzed’ after the incident, which only paused briefly when someone knocked on the door. Carter then pulled her into another bathroom, pulled off his pants and told her to do the same to him.

‘I said no and he started to get very irritated at me,’ she said. ‘At that point he put my hand on him and I opted to do the [less] or worse thing.

‘I was scared that if I hadn’t done something he would have done something really violent.’

Schuman said her nightmare didn’t stop there, with Nick then taking her into the bedroom, despite her telling him she wanted to wait until marriage to have sex.

‘I felt him put something inside of me, and I didn’t see it, I didn’t try to see it, but I said “Nick, what is that?”‘ she said. ‘And he said, “It’s all me baby.”‘

Schuman said she remembered ‘literally spinning,’ adding it wasn’t until he noticed she wasn’t ‘enjoying’ it that he stopped.

‘I remember thinking to myself: “This is just a bad dream,”‘ the former girl band member said through tears.

‘It was such a violation,’ she continued. ‘There’s no coming back from this.’ 

The next day, Schuman was in a state of shock and it wasn’t until she retold the incident to her friend’s mom that she fully understood what had happened.

‘She goes: “Honey you’ve been raped,”‘ she said somberly. 

Her friend’s mom told her to go to the police and get a rape kit, although Schuman refused, and was still in denial.

‘Then I received a text message from Nick, saying: “Why did you make me do that?”‘ she recalled.

‘That text message freaked me out.’

Schuman confided in her manager and suggested going to the police and reporting the crime, but her manager told her Nick had ‘the most powerful litigator in the country’ and pointed out that as they were trying to build her career, it wouldn’t be wise.  

‘I was in such a vulnerable position after leaving that group with no financial stability, [reporting the crime] wasn’t a viable option,’ she reflected.

The then-teen eventually broke down and told her father, Jerry, what had happened, who recalled his daughter ‘collapsing’ into his arms.

‘But I respected her decision not to report it at the time,’ he said. 

For Schuman, the next hurdle was returning to work with Nick – whom she said acted like ‘nothing had happened’ – and when the film wrapped, she changed her number.

‘I remember thinking to myself: “Okay, that’s it. I’ll just avoid him for the rest of my life,”‘ she added.

After successfully avoiding him for a year-and-a-half, Schuman signed with Kenneth Crear, finding out later that he was ‘like family’ to Nick.

After Crear pushed her to record a duet with Nick, he then organized for the Backstreet Boy to sing at her showcase event for Sony, where she admits she ‘froze’ when she saw him and gave a stilted performance, confessing she felt the song was an ‘alibi’ for him to use as proof there was no bad blood between them.

In court papers, Crear disputed Schuman’s account of her duet with Nick and her previous manager denies she told him about the alleged sexual assault. 

As Nick grew up, he became ‘tabloid fodder,’ with the heartthrob’s antics often splashed across rising gossip blogs and articles.

Old articles from 2004 show articles about Carter’s public breakup between him and socialite Paris Hilton allege he physically harmed her – with no real repercussions at the time for him and his career.

Schuman, who is now married with a child, said it wasn’t until 2017 when women came forward with allegations about Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement that followed that she began to think about about what happened to her.

She detailed the experience and posted it online – which kicked off vicious attacks from rabid fans who accused her of lying, and resulted in super fans stalking her and her family, and releasing public information online.

One YouTube creator named MollyGoLightly in particular encouraged people to target Schuman.  

‘Over the course of a number of years and hundreds of videos, she literally defended Nick Carter and [defamed] my daughter,’ Schuman said.

Her father also detailed the online abuse his daughter faced for years after her blog post went live.

Schuman’s story caught the eye of Nick’s ex-girlfriend Kaya Jones, who detailed her whirlwind romance with him.

While Nick was never physically abusive to her, she said he would ‘punch walls’ and was ‘very good at getting into your head’ and ‘liked to control everything.’

After Jones refused to take part in a sexual act he repeatedly showed her from a pornography, he became ‘nasty’ and the pair broke up.

Another woman Repp, who accused the singer of assaulting her in 2001 when she was just 15, met the Carter family through a friend and became close friends with Aaron’s twin sister Angel.

Repp had gone to stay at the Carter family compound in the Florida Keys, describing the opulence and grandeur of the multiple houses on the property, and Nick – who was 23 at the time – pouring shots for them before taking people out for a party on a boat.

She alleged he pulled her behind the back of the boat and started kissing and touching her, with Repp – who had never been drunk before – recalling next being in the boat cabin and having sex with him.

Days later, Nick asked to speak to her again, pouring the then-teenager a drink and asked her to perform oral sex on him. They ended up having sex twice more without protection, one time with Nick allowing his friends to watch through an open hatch on the boat.

In the years followed, Repp, who filed a report after the incident, started heavily drinking and doing drugs, trying to forget what happened. 

In 2023, following the most recent accusation from Repp — who was referred to only by her initials at the time — Carter’s attorney Dale Hayes Jr. told DailyMail.com that Nick denied her claims, while describing the three lawsuits as ‘malicious schemes.’

Several people in the docuseries also discussed Lou Pearlman, the record producer who created the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC.

Pearlman declared bankruptcy in 2007 and was convicted of fraud in 2008. He died at 62 in 2016 while serving a 25-year sentence for a massive Ponzi scheme which was uncovered in 2006, according to The Orlando Sentinel.

The same year Pearlman declared bankruptcy, a 2007 Vanity Fair article in called ‘Mad About the Boys’ was published and discussed molestation allegations against him.

The allegations in the article relied on innuendo and rumors, but did not contain any first-person accounts of sexual misconduct.

Pearlman denied the claims made against him.

While Nick also refuted allegations Pearlman abused him, journalist Stephanie Koul addressed the Carters’ connection to the producer and their mother’s slight acknowledgment that something was awry.

‘There were always whispers around Lou Pearlman that he was inappropriate with his underage talent,’ Koul said in the docuseries.

‘Jane had done interviews in the past where she said something was amiss between Lou and her eldest son. 

‘She never really says it with her whole chest, but if Jane thought that Lou was doing anything to her oldest son, I don’t know what she was thinking giving her youngest child to Lou.’

Mark Giovi, Aaron’s tour manager, described the fractious relationship that formed between the brothers, spurred on by their mother, Jane, who would pit them against each other.

Family and friends of the Carters explained that when Nick turned 18 he removed his parents as his managers, and the financial stress was placed on Aaron, who was only 10 at the time. 

‘No child should have to think about the wellbeing  of his family at that age,’ John Spaulding, the Carters’ cousin, said. ‘And it spilled over the Aaron and Nick’s relationship.’

Giovi described a haunting incident that occurred in 2001 when Aaron was a teenager and starring in the Broadway show Seussical, explaining he found out his family was on a vacation without him, despite saying they would go when his Broadway show had finished.

‘He was so angry at his family he then picked up a knife and put it to the side of his head,’ the tour manager recalled.

‘That was one of the scariest moments I’ve ever had working for Aaron. His parents didn’t come up to New York to see him after that.’ 

The pressure only got worse for Aaron from his mom, who was described by music editor Zena Burns as the ‘quintessential stage mom.’

‘Jane was in Aaron’s ear all the time,’ Jen, a family friend, explained. ‘Anytime Aaron didn’t want to do anything,  [she’d say] do you think Nick takes a break?’

She also recalled their father, Bob, telling a young Aaron that he was ‘never going to be as good as your brother.’ 

Jane and Bob Carter officially divorced in March 2003 and not long after, Aaron accused his mother of stealing more than $100,000 from him, according to Today, and severed ties with his mother who denied the ‘allegations that she mishandled the pop star’s funds.’

People close to the Carters described the drug and alcohol abuse that ravaged the family, and the devastation and blame placed on Nick when his younger sister, Leslie, died in 2012.

Their sister, Bobbie Jean, died in December 2023 from a drug overdose at age 41.

‘Aaron would tell me he would break into Bob’s safe to get Xanax. I wasn’t surprised. I would find these aerosol cans around the compound and found out that Aaron was using them to get high,’ Jen recalled.

Despite telling his mother about her concerns, she reported ‘nothing changed,’ with Spaulding added he saw Aaron ‘huffing paint’ with his father Bob at one point.

‘Nick and Aaron are both victims of bad parenting, of poor choices, of neglect,’ he continued.

Spaulding added: ‘The alcohol played a big part in the downfall of the whole family.’

As Aaron grew older, his struggles with his mental health became even more obvious.

Aaron’s ex-girlfriend Lina Valentina, whom he dated in 2018 until he relapsed about 12 months later, said Angel and Nick tried to get their brother help, but after he spoke about visions of killing Nick’s wife Lauren Kitt and their three children, he cut ties with him.

‘I was afraid,’ Valentina recalled. ‘Me and Angel went to the police. They said if you file a restraining order, by law they have to take the guns [Aaron was holding up in an Instagram Live] away.’

Nick tweeted in September 2019 that he had filed a restraining order for the safety of his family.

Aaron met and fell in love with ex-fiancé Melanie Martin, who gave birth to his only child Prince in November 2021.

Martin detailed the horrific abuse he suffered online after coming to the defense of his brother’s alleged rape victims.

In particular, a YouTube personality known as Ganval would threaten the child star, encouraging followers to send him messages to trigger him and threaten his son, as well as publicly encouraging him to relapse. 

Instagram live videos of Aaron show him rapidly unraveling as the online bullying became more intense, he and Martin lost custody of their son, with his ex-fiancé admitting that it was the beginning of the end for him.

Aaron was found dead in his home on November 5, 2022, at age 34 by his housekeeper, with a coroner ruling it an accidental overdose. 

In December 2022, another Nick accuser Shannon Ruth came forward, filing a lawsuit against him, claiming that he raped her in 2001 when she was only 17. 

This led to Schuman and Repp filing their own lawsuits. 

Ruth, who is on the autism spectrum and has cerebral palsy, claims that Nick raped her on his tour bus after a show.

‘I was crying and he was screaming at me, “Stop crying,”‘ she recalled tearfully. ‘It was so mentally overwhelming and confusing for me. He had me go to the bed and pulled down my pants [and performed oral sex on me].’

The documentary notes that as of May 2024, Schuman, Repp and Ruth’s lawsuits against were still pending. Nick maintains his innocence.

‘These are exactly the same outrageous claims that led us to sue this gang of conspirators,’ Dale Hayes, Jr., attorney for Nick Carter, said in a statement to DailyMail.com.

The statement continued: ‘Those cases are working their way through the legal system now, and, based on both the initial court rulings and the overwhelming evidence, we have every belief that we will prevail and hold them accountable for spreading these falsehoods.’

The last two episodes of Fallen Idols: Nick And Aaron Carter will air on Investigation Discovery on Tuesday, May 28, at 9 p.m. ET, and all episodes will be available to stream on Max.