No “trigger warning?”
Do you really need one with that title?
I think it is important to note that this is a civil case, not a criminal case.
These allegations bear no resemblance to those in the APT PUPIL case. And yes: reporters and bloggers should be much more careful about pointing out that this is a civil case, not a criminal case, and why that might be.
Egan, an aspiring actor and model at the time, claims that Singer provided him with several drugs, including cocaine, a pill identified as “green triangle” which is believed to be a reference to the drug Ecstasy, Xanax, Rohypnol, and Vicodin or Percocet, in addition to alcoholic beverages.
I remember the green triangles floating around LA in 1998 & 1999. Very, very, very good MDMA. Best I’ve ever had, before or since. There was none of that other shit in those pills, like the article states.
What is the apt pupil case?
I parsed that sentence as a list of drugs that he was allegedly provided rather than what was in the green triangle pill.
Reworded:
Egan, an aspiring actor and model at the time, claims that Singer provided him with several drugs, including cocaine, Xanax, Rohypnol, Vicodin or Percocet, alcoholic beverages, and a pill identified as “green triangle” which is believed to be a reference to the drug Ecstasy,
Ah. Much clearer. Thank you.
Out of curiosity, why is this being filed as a civil suit, instead of pursuing criminal charges? Is there a statute of limitation on rape charges?
The Apt Pupilcase had to do with a lawsuit filed by the parents of some of the teenage extras on the film claiming that, not to put too fine of a point on it, Bryan Singer filmed them in a scene set in a high school locker room purely for the sake of getting off. After a big investigation, the civil suit was dismissed and criminal charges were never filed.
I’m inclined to be extremely skeptical of these new charges, both because of the timing of the suit (fifteen years after the alleged events, one month before the new X-Men movie comes out) and because the attorney masterminded the similar lawsuits against Kevin Clash, which ruined his career even though most of them were dismissed.
So why did this guy have repeated contact with Singer? I’d be out of there at the first suggestion of naked lap sitting.
I did some looking around it’s likely with the statute of limitations. Most states seem to not have one for rape. Or have >10 years, extend them if the Vic is a minor. And there a bunch of ways to tweek statute of limitations to get more time out of it. Also moving a minor across state lines is a federal crime, so if was underaged during any of this there’s that angle too. So there’s a question of why there’s no law enforcement involvement from multiple jurisdictions, for multiple alleged crimes.
But then I have heard crazy, creepy shit from friends in LA about Singer for a long while.
He was an aspiring actor and model, so if this DID happen, one presumes that the reason for going back would be because of promises of future stardom.
Or, hell, he may have just liked it. But he was 17 at the time of the alleged offense, so it was against the law regardless, and maybe now he’s realized “Hey, wait a second, that was pretty fucked up”. (Edited to add: I’m not saying that he DID like it, or that even if he did that that excuses it, because it doesn’t [if it actually happened]).
Lots of rapes go unprosecuted. RAINN notes that out of every 100 rapes, 40 are reported to police, 10 lead to an arrest, and 8 are prosecuted. So even if it was reported to police, there is only a 20% chance it would end up with a criminal charge.
https://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates
Not to mention the rather abhorrent attitude that men cannot be raped. Or that criteria on male rape tend to be very specific; rape is any sexual act forced on a person, but legal definitions tend to include penetration of the victim.
I’m thankful I live in a state that has a pretty expansive definition of sexual assault. I mean, I doubt I have anything to worry about, really, but it grinds my gears that in states like Georgia it’s technically true (the last I knew) that a male cannot be raped.
These sorts of situations are always sick and sad. Blaming the victim for waiting so long to bring a case is the wrong reaction, because the victim may have had to undergo years of introspection and therapy (perhaps even addiction treatment) to understand that he/she was a victim in the first place. But letting a media-savvy attorney tarnish the reputation of someone who is not conclusively proven to have done wrong is also problematic.
The unfortunate truth is that where there are repeated signs of smoke, there’s often fire, and those who are powerful and wealthy tend also to have the privilege of legal protection that allows them to dodge these claims, those who have a pattern of attracting this sort of attention are more often than not involved in something sordid.
The other sad truth is that this is more commonplace in the entertainment industry than it ought to be. Many of these kids have to sell their souls and become deeply damaged goods if they want to get to the top, because it’s the most reliable shortcut available.
A few years back myself and a co-writer spent time in the World of Warcraft tracking down sex predator Collins-Rector’s investments in virtual game gold and equipment, for Radar magazine. The trio who had fled the M&C Mansion to Spain still owed a great deal of money in civil judgments to victims in California. The imaginary zorkmids and elf swords of Spain-based IGE seemed like a great place to hide those funds.
Unfortunately, due to space constraints, editors chopped out our time pursuing interviews with dwarves inside the World of Warcraft who were there to deliver IGE/DEN co-founder Brock Pierce’s virtual game goods, and emphasized some other stuff. But you can still read the piece here at Archive.org:
That last line of the quoted bit is weird and unsettling.
“A Hollywood mogul must not use his position to sexually exploit underage actors.”
Seems oddly specific, almost like saying
“An accredited accountant must not murder real estate agents they’ve hired to sell their home.”
Like, if you changed one of those specific bits, it’s perhaps suddenly okay, or maybe they’re thinking, “Yeah, I could see how you might think that’s okay, but it’s not.”
