| August Ames | |
| Birth Name: | Mercedes Grabowski |
| Birth Date: | August 23, 1994 |
| Birth Place: | Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada |
| Death Place: | Camarillo, California, U.S. |
| Death Cause: | Suicide by hanging |
| Occupation: | Pornographic actress |
| Spouse: | Kevin Moore |
| Years Active: | 2013–2017 |
August Ames (born Mercedes Grabowski; August 23, 1994 – December 5, 2017) was a Canadian pornographic actress. She appeared in more than 100 films, including a non-pornographic film in 2016, and was nominated for several AVN Awards.[1] With a self-disclosed history of sexual abuse and mental illness, Ames died by suicide in 2017 at the age of 23 after a social media backlash following a tweet she posted, due to some perceiving the tweet as homophobic. Her death led to considerable industry attention, as discussion circulated as to the degree of the influence of cancel culture.
Ames was born Mercedes Grabowski in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, on August 23, 1994. She grew up in Petawawa, Ontario, and later lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Both her parents were in the army and she spent her early years as a military brat, including a number of years living beside Canadian Forces Base Petawawa.[2]
Ames alleged that she was routinely sexually molested by her paternal grandfather as a child, but her father refused to believe her and she was sent to live in a group home at 12 years old.[3] She also spoke of being enticed to strip by an adult male as a young teenager in exchange for drugs. Ames studied culinary arts for a year after graduating from high school. Prior to her adult film career, she worked as a nanny, an animal-assisted aide, and a horseback trainer.
Ames's career as a pornographic actress began at the age of 19, in November 2013. She had over 100 IMDb credits, including productions by companies such as Brazzers, Elegant Angel, Evil Angel, Girlfriends Films, Jules Jordan Video, New Sensations and Sweetheart Video.[4] She was nominated for four AVN Awards in her lifetime, including three nominations for Female Performer of the Year.[5]
In 2016, she appeared in the non-pornographic film Model for Murder: The Centerfold Killer.[6]
Ames married Kevin Moore, a pornography producer and director for Evil Angel.[13] [14]
Weeks prior to her death, Ames said that she had a history of bipolar depressive disorder and dissociative identity disorder due to her 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." She also disclosed that she had found it difficult to locate care for her conditions due to preconceptions about adult film industry professionals.[15]
In December 2017, Ames was due to perform in a scene, but withdrew when she learned that the co-star was a man who had appeared in gay pornography. On December 3, 2017, Ames wrote on Twitter:[16]
The tweet drew criticism and abuse from social media users. Ames, who was bisexual, defended her right to exercise her sexual autonomy in a subsequent tweet.[17] [18] According to an article subsequently published in Rolling Stone, the tweet and its response revealed a "schism" in the porn industry between those who believed that there was a lower chance of sexually-transmitted infections for women who film with straight male partners than with males who perform with women, other men, or trans people and those who believed the standard to be flawed and homophobic.[19]
On December 5, 2017, two days after her tweet, Ames was found dead in a park in Camarillo, California, at the age of 23.[20] [21] Her death was ruled a suicide due to asphyxia by hanging by the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office.[22] 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.[23]
Close friends stated that cyberbullying led to her suicide.[24] Her final tweet before suicide had been the words "Fuck y'all." Some pointed to a demand by Jaxton Wheeler, a pansexual performer, that Ames apologize or take a cyanide pill. Journalist Jon Ronson later found that Wheeler's tweet could not have been seen by Ames, as it was not released until after her death.[25] [26] [27] However, questions about the degree to which cancel culture might have contributed to Ames' death lingered for many months.[28]
Ames' brother and Ronson suggested that violence by Markus Dupree towards Ames during pornographic filming could have triggered traumatic memories or contributed to the suicide. [29] [30] She texted multiple people after filming to voice her distress over the scene, which was filmed about six weeks before her death.
An investigation into her suicide was covered in the podcast series The Last Days of August by journalist Jon Ronson, who has a history of writing about both cyberbullying and the porn industry. In the podcast, Ronson investigates the cyberbullying aspect of the story but explores multiple aspects of Ames's life, including marital problems, social isolation, her history of trauma, and her history of mental illness and substance abuse. 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 modern morality play An Inspector Calls (1945).[31]
In the wake of Ames's death and the deaths of several other adult performers that year, several initiatives within the industry were proposed to deal with the issue,[32] including The August Project, a hotline conceived by Moore,[33] and Pineapple Support, a non-profit organization launched in April 2018 by British performer Leya Tanit.[34]