Suit: X-Men Director Repeatedly Raped Teen

Bryan Singer accused of drugging, raping teen boy in 1990s
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 17, 2014 10:03 AM CDT
Suit: X-Men Director Repeatedly Raped Teen
American director Bryan Singer talks in the Open Talks during the Pusan International Film Festival in Busan, South Korea, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009.   (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

High-profile director Bryan Singer has been accused in a lawsuit filed yesterday of drugging and raping a teenage boy more than a decade ago. The suit alleges 48-year-old Singer, who has directed such hits as The Usual Suspects and a number of X-Men movies, met up with Michael Egan at a number of house parties in California and Hawaii starting in the late 1990s. "The parties were typically sordid and featured sexual contact between adult males and the many teenage boys who were present for the parties," the lawsuit says, and it accuses Singer of plying Egan with drugs and alcohol in order to force oral and anal sex on him, Reuters reports. The extremely graphic suit also accuses Singer of forcing Egan to take cocaine and of pushing his head underwater in a pool, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Egan, now 31, says he was paid at least $1,500 per week by former entertainment business exec Marc Collins-Rector, now a registered sex offender. Egan didn't have a clear job, but was sent to these parties and other "attractive locations." He was 17 when, he says, Singer assaulted him during two week-long Hawaii trips in 1999. Egan claims Singer promised him an X-Men role, and that he and other men threatened to "destroy [Egan's] hopes and dreams of an acting career if he did not keep them happy." As for Singer, his rep calls the lawsuit "absurd and defamatory," according to CNN. The statement continues, "It is obvious that this case was filed in an attempt to get publicity at the time when Bryan's new movie [X-Men: Days of Future Past] is about to open in a few weeks." (More Bryan Singer stories.)

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