August Ames

August Ames (born Mercedes Grabowski; 23 August 1994 – 5 December 2017) was a Canadian pornographic actress and model. She appeared in almost 290 movies, including a non-pornographic film in 2016, and was nominated for several AVN Awards.[2][4] In 2017, at the age of 23, Ames committed suicide after a particular event of social media backlash following a Twitter post that she had made.

August Ames
Ames at an AVN Awards show in Las Vegas in 2014
Born
Mercedes Grabowski[1]

(1994-08-23)23 August 1994
Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada[2]
Died5 December 2017(2017-12-05) (aged 23)[3]
Camarillo, California, U.S.[1]
Cause of deathSuicide by hanging
Occupation
  • Pornographic actress
  • model
Years active2013–2017
Spouse(s)
Kevin Moore
(
m. 2016)

Life

August Ames was born Mercedes Grabowski in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. She grew up in Petawawa, Ontario, and later lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado.[5] She graduated from Oromocto High School. She was of Polish ancestry and was also one-quarter African-American.[6] Both her parents worked in the army and she spent her early years as a military brat,[7] including a number of years living beside Canadian Forces Base Petawawa.[5]

Ames's mother suffered from bipolar disorder.[1] Ames alleged that she was routinely sexually molested by her paternal grandfather as a child, but her father refused to believe her and at 12 years old she was sent to live in a group home.[8] In her early years, she worked as a nanny, animal-assisted aide, and horseback trainer.[7]

Ames was married to Kevin Moore, a pornography producer and director for Evil Angel.[9][10] Weeks prior to her death, Ames had confirmed that she had a history of bipolar depressive disorder and dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality) due to a traumatic childhood, stating: "Some days I'll be fine and if I'm not doing anything I'll get these awful flashbacks of my childhood and I get very depressed and I can't get out of bed and cancel my scenes for like a week or two."[8]

Career

Ames's career as a pornographic actress began at the age of 19, in November 2013. She performed in over 270 films,[1] including productions by companies such as Brazzers, Elegant Angel, Evil Angel, Girlfriends Films, Jules Jordan Video, New Sensations and Sweetheart Video.[11] She was nominated for four AVN Awards in her lifetime, including three nominations for Female Performer of the Year.[12]

In 2016, she appeared in the non-pornographic film Model for Murder: The Centerfold Killer.[13]

In December 2017, Ames was due to perform in a pornographic scene, but withdrew when she learned that the co-star was a man who had appeared in gay pornography and was not tested for sexually transmitted infections. On 3 December 2017, Ames wrote on Twitter:[14]

August Ames Twitter
@@AugustAmesxxx

whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXNews, you're shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say🤷🏽‍♀️ Do agents really not care about who they're representing? #ladirect I do my homework for my body🤓✏️🔍

3 December 2017[15]

The tweet drew criticism and abuse from social media users. Jaxton Wheeler, a pansexual performer, demanded that Ames apologize or take a cyanide pill which he later regretted.[16][17] Ames—who was bisexual—asserted that she loved the LGBT community and that she had a right to exercise her sexual autonomy.[18][19][20][21]

Death

On 5 December 2017, two days after her tweet, Ames was found dead in a park in Camarillo, California, at the age of 23.[22][3] Her death was ruled a suicide due to asphyxia by hanging by the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office.[23] Upon her autopsy, toxicology results revealed that she had cocaine, marijuana, the antidepressant Sertraline (Zoloft), and the anxiolytic Alprazolam (Xanax) in her system at her time of death.[24] Close friends stated that cyberbullying led her to end her life.[25]

An investigation into her suicide was covered in the Audible series The Last Days of August by Jon Ronson after her husband, Kevin Moore, encouraged Ronson and his producer to look into the cyberbullying that he claimed had led to Ames's death. In the podcast, Ronson duly investigates the cyberbullying aspect of the story but then goes further and looks more closely at Moore's role in Ames's death by examining his prior relationships and Ames's history of mental illness. Ronson concludes that a number of people around Ames contributed to the poor mental state that led to her death and draws comparisons between Ames's suicide and the fictional suicide of the young girl in J. B. Priestley's seminal play An Inspector Calls.[5]

In the wake of Ames' death, and the deaths of several other adult performers that year, several initiatives within the industry were proposed to deal with the issue,[26] including The August Project, a hotline conceived by Moore,[27] and Pineapple Support, a non-profit launched in April 2018 by British performer Leya Tanit.[28]

gollark: You just use the HTTP library.
gollark: The common thing now is to have web applications be programs which serve HTTP themselves, but it used to be the case (still is with PHP as far as I know) that your webapp would be a bunch of files run through stuff like (Fast)CGI.
gollark: Generally, web applications are programmed in things like Python, JavaScript, Ruby and (alas) PHP.
gollark: You could run the thing on the same server as your Minecraft server, but you can't host a webserver from ingame.
gollark: If you had a web backend for it, you could easily enough have other servers run their own webservers.

References
  1. Dory Jackson (7 December 2017). "Everything We Know About August Ames' Death". International Business Times. Archived from the original on 8 December 2017. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  2. Tod Hunter (1 April 2014). "Fresh Face: August Ames". AVN. Archived from the original on 7 December 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2017.
  3. Dan Miller (6 December 2017). "August Ames Passes Away". AVN. Archived from the original on 7 December 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2017.
  4. Rachel DeSantis (6 December 2017). "Porn Star August Ames Dies at 23". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on 7 December 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2017.
  5. Simon Houpt (31 December 2018). "The Porn Tragedy Canadian Media Didn't Cover". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 31 December 2018.
  6. "August Ames Tells Favorite Position and Shows Tattoos AVN 2015". Retrieved 8 September 2019 – via www.youtube.com.
  7. Peter (3 January 2017). "August Ames Interview For Barelist". Barelist. Archived from the original on 10 June 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2017.
  8. Nicole Bitette (7 December 2017). "Porn star August Ames revealed depression struggles before death". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on 8 December 2017. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  9. "Adult actor August Ames found dead age 23". The Independent. 7 December 2017. Archived from the original on 8 December 2017. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  10. Janice Williams (7 December 2017). "Who is August Ames's husband Kevin Moore?". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 8 December 2017.
  11. Melissa Santana (6 December 2017). "Adult Star August Ames Passes Away". XBIZ. Archived from the original on 6 December 2017. Retrieved 7 December 2017.
  12. Janice Williams (7 December 2017). "What was August Ames cause of death?". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 8 December 2017. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  13. "Model for Murder: The Centerfold Killer". Internet Movie Database. 21 June 2016. Archived from the original on 13 February 2017. Retrieved 10 December 2017.
  14. Snow, Aurora (31 December 2018). "Was Porn Star August Ames Really Cyberbullied to Death?". Retrieved 21 November 2019.
  15. August Ames [@@AugustAmesxxx] (3 December 2017). "whichever (lady) performer is replacing me tomorrow for @EroticaXNews, you're shooting with a guy who has shot gay porn, just to let cha know. BS is all I can say🤷🏽‍♀️ Do agents really not care about who they're representing? #ladirect I do my homework for my body🤓✏️🔍" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  16. EST, Maria Vultaggio On 12/11/17 at 1:25 PM (11 December 2017). "Jaxton Wheeler explains August Ames "cyanide" tweet and what really he meant to say". Newsweek.
  17. "'She is the victim, but I have been victimised."". NewsComAu. 11 December 2017.
  18. Maya Oppenheim (7 December 2017). "What you need to know about August Ames – the adult film star who died aged 23". The Independent. Archived from the original on 7 December 2017. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  19. Jessica Gibb (8 December 2017). "Gay porn star who trolled August Ames refuses to back down after suicide". Daily Mirror. Archived from the original on 8 December 2017. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  20. August Ames (4 December 2017). "August Ames states she loves the gay community". Twitter. Archived from the original on 9 December 2017. Retrieved 9 December 2017.
  21. "Porn Star August Ames Found Dead at Age 23 After Enduring Online Harassment". Maxim. 7 December 2017. Archived from the original on 8 December 2017. Retrieved 8 December 2017.
  22. Emmeline Saunders (9 December 2017). "Porn star August Ames hanged herself in park 20 minutes' drive from her home and left suicide note in car saying sorry to parents". Daily Mirror. Archived from the original on 10 December 2017. Retrieved 18 December 2017.
  23. "Porn star August Ames found dead in suicide after online criticism". BNO News. 6 December 2017.
  24. Connor Casey (9 February 2018). "Adult Film Star August Ames Had Cocaine, Depression Medication in Her System at Time of Death". Retrieved 21 January 2019.
  25. Rachel Desantis (6 December 2017). "Porn star August Ames dead at 23". New York Daily News. Retrieved 21 January 2018.
  26. Tina Horn (19 March 2018). "How August Ames' Suicide is Changing the Porn Industry". Rolling Stone.
  27. Susannah Breslin (31 January 2019). "A Porn Star's Widower Delivers a Moving Speech at the Oscars of Porn". Forbes.com.
  28. Kaitlyn Severin (25 May 2018). "Mental Illness is Killing Porn Stars and the Industry is Taking Action". VICE.
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