Linda Lovelace - Charges Against Chuck Traynor

Charges Against Chuck Traynor

In her suit to divorce Traynor, she claimed that he forced her into pornography at gunpoint, and that in Deep Throat itself, bruises from his beatings can be seen on her legs. She made the assertion that her husband "would force her to do these things by pointing an M-16 rifle at her head." Boreman claimed in her autobiography that her marriage had been plagued by violence, rape, forced prostitution, and private pornography. She wrote:

When in response to his suggestions I let him know I would not become involved in prostitution in any way and told him I intended to leave, beat me up physically and the constant mental abuse began. I literally became a prisoner, I was not allowed out of his sight, not even to use the bathroom, where he watched me through a hole in the door. He slept on top of me at night, he listened to my telephone calls with a .45 automatic eight shot pointed at me. I was beaten physically and suffered mental abuse each and every day thereafter. He undermined my ties with other people and forced me to marry him on advice from his lawyer. My initiation into prostitution was a gang rape by five men, arranged by Mr. Traynor. It was the turning point in my life. He threatened to shoot me with the pistol if I didn't go through with it. I had never experienced anal sex before and it ripped me apart. They treated me like an inflatable plastic doll, picking me up and moving me here and there. They spread my legs this way and that, shoving their things at me and into me, they were playing musical chairs with parts of my body. I have never been so frightened and disgraced and humiliated in my life. I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will to avoid being killed...The lives of my family were threatened.

Lovelace's accusations provoked mixed responses. Skeptics included Traynor, who admitted to striking Lovelace, but said it was part of a voluntary sex game. In Legs McNeil and Jennifer Osborne's 2005 book The Other Hollywood, several witnesses, including Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano, state Traynor beat Boreman behind closed doors, but they also question her credibility. Eric Edwards, Boreman's co-star in the dog sex films and other loops that featured Linda urinating on her sex partners, confirms her lack of credibility. According to Edwards, Boreman was a sexual "super freak" who had no boundaries and was a pathological liar. Adult-film actress Gloria Leonard is quoted as saying, "This was a woman who never took responsibility for her own choices made; but instead blamed everything that happened to her in her life on porn." Corroboration for Lovelace's claim came from Andrea True, Lovelace's co-star in Deep Throat 2 who, on a commentary DVD track of the documentary Inside Deep Throat, stated that Traynor was a sadist and was disliked by the Deep Throat 2 cast. Andrea Dworkin stated that the results of polygraph tests administered to Boreman support her assertions. Moreover, psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman notes that many details in Lovelace's memoir Ordeal are consistent with a diagnosis of Complex PTSD, such as Lovelace's description of a fragmented personality in the aftermath of alleged abuse.

Eric Danville, a journalist who covered the porn industry for nearly 20 years and wrote The Complete Linda Lovelace in 2001, said Boreman never changed her version of events that had occurred 30 years earlier with Traynor. When Danville told Boreman of his book proposal, he said she was overcome with emotion and saddened he had uncovered the bestiality film, which she had initially denied making and later maintained she had been forced to star in at gunpoint.

Boreman maintained she received no money for Deep Throat, and that the $1,250 payment for her appearance was taken by Traynor.