August Ames 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. 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.
Life
August Ames was born Mercedes Grabowski in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. She grew up in Petawawa, Ontario, and later lived in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She graduated from Oromocto High School. She was of Polish ancestry and was also one-quarter African-American. Both her parents worked in the army and she spent her early years as a military brat, including a number of years living beside Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. Ames's mother suffered from bipolar disorder. 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. In her early years, she worked as a nanny, animal-assisted aide, and horseback trainer. Ames was married to Kevin Moore, a pornography producer and director for Evil Angel. Weeks prior to her death, Ames had confirmed that she had a history of bipolar depressive disorder and dissociative identity disorder 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."
Career
Ames's career as a pornographic actress began at the age of 19, in November 2013. She performed in over 270 films, including productions by companies such as Brazzers, Elegant Angel, Evil Angel, Girlfriends Films, Jules Jordan Video, New Sensations and Sweetheart Video. She was nominated for four AVN Awards in her lifetime, including three nominations for Female Performer of the Year. In 2016, she appeared in the non-pornographic film Model for Murder: The Centerfold Killer. 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: 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. Ames—who was bisexual—asserted that she loved the LGBT community and that she had a right to exercise her sexual autonomy.
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. Her death was ruled a suicide due to asphyxiaby hanging by the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office. Upon her autopsy, toxicology results revealed that she had cocaine, marijuana, the antidepressant Sertraline, and the anxiolytic Alprazolam in her system at her time of death. Close friends stated that cyberbullying led her to end her life. 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. 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, including The August Project, a hotline conceived by Moore, and Pineapple Support, a non-profit launched in April 2018 by British performer Leya Tanit.
