‘X-men’ director accused of 2003 rape
Bryan Singer attacked and threatened boy, then 17, lawsuit alleges.
Filmmaker Bryan Singer was accused in a lawsuit filed Thursday of raping a 17-yearold boy on a yacht in the Seattle area 14 years ago.
Cesar Sanchez-Guzman, said in the lawsuit and an interview with The Times that at a party in 2003, Singer— best known for directing “The Usual Suspects” and the “X-Men” series — led him to a back room of the boat, where he forced the high school student to engage in oral sex and then raped him.
Singer then told Sanchez-Guzman 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,” and warned him that he could “hire people who are capable of ruining someone’s reputation” if he were to report it, according to the lawsuit.
Singer’s attorney Andrew Brettler said in a statement that the director “categorically denies these allegations and will vehemently defend this lawsuit to the very end.” Brettler called into question the timing of the lawsuit, attesting that Sanchez-Guzman “apparently claims that he did not remember this alleged incident from 2003 until now.”
He said Singer intended to file a legal action of his own against Sanchez-Guzman and the law firm representing him, Florida-based Herman Law, which the filmmaker has battled before. The firm filed lawsuits — since dismissed — against Singer on behalf of other accusers in 2014.
On Friday, the USC School of Cinematic Arts announced in a statement that it would be dropping Singer’s name from its Division of Cinema and Media Studies at the filmmaker’s request, as he “does not want the pending litigation to have any negative impact on his alma mater.” Singer graduated from the school in 1989 and received naming honors
after he gifted it $5 million.
Sanchez-Guzman, now 31, said the rape occurred after he was “selected” for an invitation to the yacht party by a Seattle-area tech investor who often threw parties for young gay men.
Sanchez-Guzman said that Singer introduced himself and offered a tour of the yacht, leading him to a small room down a corridor.
The legal complaint says that Singer “thrust his body” on Sanchez-Guzman, forced him to the floor and forced him to engage in oral sex. Singer then raped Sanchez-Guzman while the high school student “pleaded for him to stop,” the suit states.
He said he later told of the rape to a close friend. That person did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sanchez-Guzman said that fear of being outed as a gay man kept him from telling his family or going to the police. His family was very religious, he said, and reporting Singer would have resulted in them learning that he was gay.
“That was not an option,” he said. “I knew if I did, the consequences would be worse for me.”
Washington state law has a “delayed discovery” statute, which in some cases allows civil accusers of sexual abuse to file a claim after the traditional statute of limitations has expired, as it would have in this case. They must show that less than three years has passed since learning how the abuse impacted them.
On the advice of his attorney, Sanchez-Guzman would not explain why he decided to file the lawsuit now.
His attorney, Daniel Ellis of Herman Law, credited the “collective empowerment” that has followed the recent widespread exposure of allegations of sexual assault and harassment against film mogul Harvey Weinstein and others in Hollywood and elsewhere.
“People feel like they’re in a safe space to make accusations,” Ellis said.
Herman Law also represented plaintiffs who in 2014 filed federal lawsuits against Singer and others, which alleged that the filmmaker sexually abused underage boys at a Hawaii estate and in a London hotel suite.
The plaintiffs in both cases also sued Hollywood producer and director Gary Goddard, whose publicist has said the claims are false and defamatory.
Singer has previously derided the 2014 legal claims as a “sick, twisted shakedown,” and his attorneys have said they are baseless. The lawsuits against both men were voluntarily dismissed. Jeffrey Herman, the founder of Herman Law who represented one of the plaintiffs, Michael Egan, later apologized to two other defendants for including them in the litigation.
In his statement Thursday, Singer’s attorney seized on Herman’s involvement in this new lawsuit. “We are confident that this case will turn out the same way the Egan case did,” the statement said. “And once Bryan prevails, he will pursue his own claims for malicious prosecution.”
Film studio 20th Century Fox fired Singer this week as director of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a biopic of the band Queen. Though the studio did not give a reason for the firing, it had blamed Singer’s “unexpected unavailability” for delaying production.