Rumors Abound in Wake of Bryan Singer Sex Scandal

When news broke yesterday that Bryan Singer had been accused of repeatedly raping a teenage boy, the director's rep called the lawsuit an "absurd" attempt to get attention as Singer awaits next month's release of his latest X-Men movie—but it certainly doesn't look like the scandal is going away any time soon. Defamer rounds up a number of salacious rumors about Singer on sites including Dlisted, Queerty, and IMDB, with the takeaway being, as Jordan Sargent puts it: "Bryan Singer's obsession with barely legal boys was an open secret" in Hollywood.

And this isn't the first time Singer's been sued over something shady, Sargent points out: In 1997, a 14-year-old extra and two other boys who worked on Singer's Apt Pupil sued filmmakers, alleging they forced the underage extras to strip completely naked for one of the scenes. Entertainment Weekly has a roundup of those accusations; according to the Raw Story, the district attorney ultimately determined there was no basis for a criminal case. As for the current case, the alleged victim, Michael Egan, first sued over alleged sexual abuse at Hollywood parties in 1999 back in 2000, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Singer was not named in that lawsuit; rather, the focuses were the hosts of the parties. It's not clear how that lawsuit was resolved. Yesterday, Egan spoke to the press about what he says he experienced at the parties, the New York Daily News reports: "You were a piece of meat to these people and they’d pass you around between them." (More Bryan Singer stories.)