Hollywood abuse lawsuit adds three
Mother says she told FBI about her son’s plight
BEVERLY HILLS — A man who has accused X-Men director Bryan Singer of sexually abusing him when he was a teen is suing three more entertainment industry figures, claiming they also molested him.
The allegations in the latest lawsuits Michael Egan III filed Monday are substantially similar to his legal action against Singer. That lawsuit accuses the director of abusing him between the ages of 15 and 17 in Los Angeles and Hawaii.
Monday’s lawsuits were filed in federal court in Hawaii against former Fox television executive Garth Ancier, theatre producer Gary Wayne Goddard and David A. Neuman, a former TV executive with Current TV and Disney.
Alan Grodin, an attorney for Goddard, said the executive was out of the country and had not seen the lawsuit.
“Based on what we have heard, the allegations are without merit,” Grodin said. “Once we have seen the complaint we will respond appropriately.”
Ancier did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment.
Neuman could not be reached for comment. Phone numbers associated with him have been disconnected and he did not immediately respond to a message sent through the social networking site LinkedIn.
The lawsuits were filed in Hawaii under a law that temporarily suspends the statute of limitations in civil cases of sexual abuse.
Singer’s attorney, Marty Singer (no relation), has denied the director abused Egan, calling the allegations defamatory. He has said the director was not in Hawaii when Egan says he was abused and was instead working on production for the first X-Men film.
None of the men has been criminally charged, and the statute of limitations for any such charges has passed.
Ancier was the founding programmer at the Fox network, later going on to create programming for The WB, and was a top executive at NBC En- tertainment.
Egan, 31, appeared at a news conference Monday alongside his mother, who tearfully described her efforts to report alleged abuses to the FBI in 1999 and 2000.
Bonnie Mound said she wrote several letters to FBI agents in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., urging them to take action. She questioned why those letters and information her son provided in interviews with an agent did not result in criminal charges.
The FBI has said it could not discuss specifically what Egan told them, however, the agency denied last week that it had ignored any information about the allegations.
“The suggestion that the FBI ignored a minor victim, or evidence involving the sexual victimization of a child, is ludicrous,” FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said last week. She reiterated that statement after Egan’s news conference Monday.
Mound denied her son’s lawsuits were motivated by anything other than holding the defendants accountable.
“It’s not about money,” Mound said, breaking down in tears.
Egan said he spent several years masking his pain by drinking. He stopped drinking within the past year, entered therapy and sought out a lawyer who would pursue a case.