Bryan Singer Accused in Lawsuit of Sexually Assaulting a Minor 

A lawsuit filed in Washington state court on Thursday against Bryan Singer alleges that the X-Men director and producer sexually assaulted a 17-year-old boy on a yacht in 2003.

The plaintiff, Cesar Sanchez-Guzman, claims in the lawsuit that he met Singer in 2003 at a party on a yacht, during which Singer offered to give him a tour of the premises. Singer then allegedly “lured Cesar into a room, shut the door and demanded that Cesar perform oral sex. When [Sanchez-Guzman] refused, Bryan Singer forced him into acts of oral and anal sex.” The lawsuit states that Sanchez-Guzman was a minor at the time of the alleged attack.

The lawsuit also alleges that Singer used his status as an influential producer in Hollywood to intimidate Sanchez-Guzman into silence:

“Later, Bryan Singer approached Cesar and told him that he was a producer in Hollywood and that he could help Cesar get into acting as long as Cesar never said anything about the incident. He then told Cesar that no one would believe him if he ever reported the incident, and that he could hire people who are capable of ruining someone’s reputation.”

Finally, Sanchez-Guzman seeks “general and specific damages” from Singer for, among other things, “emotional distress, mental aguish, physical and mental pain and suffering,” stemming from the alleged attack.

Only three days ago, Singer was fired from his job directing the Freddy Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, reportedly for being absent too often from the set (Singer said the absences were due to his caring for a sick parent).

A rep for Singer told TMZ, which first reported the news, “The lawsuit was filed by the same lawyer who represented Michael Egan. Those lies were dismissed by Egan himself, and he later went to Federal prison for lying in a fraud case.”

Sanchez-Guzman’s lawyer is Jeffrey Herman, who represented Egan in his 2014 lawsuit against Singer that was eventually dropped. Herman later apologized to two other powerful Hollywood men whom Egan had accused of sex abuse, Garth Ancier and David Neuman, asserting that the allegations Egan made against them were baseless.