The man behind Hollywood’s latest sex abuse case

Michael Egan came to Hollywood at 14 or 15, a Nebraska kid who had done some professional modelling and was hoping to make it as an actor.

A friend at school invited him to a mansion in the Encino neighbourhood where, according to a lawsuit filed by Egan, he and other teenage boys were plied with drugs and alcohol — and then coerced into having sex with older men.

Egan’s lawsuit, filed in 2000 when he was 17, alleged that three men sexually abused him at the Encino estate starting when he was 15 years old. He and two co-plaintiffs won a judgment against them for $4.5 million (Dh16.5 million).

Now Egan is suing again over sexual abuse he claims occurred at that same time, at that same Encino compound, but against a different group of men.

The men named in the four new suits — X-Men director Bryan Singer and Hollywood executives Garth Ancier, David Neuman and Gary Goddard — all deny Egan’s allegations. The defendants’ attorneys argue that Egan lacks credibility because he did not name their clients in the previous lawsuit.

Legal experts say that Egan’s delay in bringing the suit could be a key issue in a case that has made headlines and forced Singer to pull out of the marketing push for his latest film, X-Men: Days of Future Past, which opens on May 23.

“He [Egan] apparently knew about this event way back when — and was with it enough to sue people — so the current defendants are going to ask, ‘Well, gee, why didn’t you sue us earlier?’” said Loyola Law School professor Dan Schechter.

Schechter said that the defendants could also argue that because Egan waited so long to sue, evidence that would have exonerated them has been lost, depriving them of the ability to mount a proper defence.

Egan said he was traumatised for years, and that only after he began therapy last year did he decide to sue.

“I’d never healed from any of this,” he said in an interview.

Now 31, Egan is unemployed and remains in therapy, according to his attorney, Jeff Herman. A resident of Las Vegas, Egan sought for years to make it in Hollywood as an actor. He also partnered with an older brother in a company that staged haunted house attractions, but the two had a falling out about a decade ago, court records show.

According to Egan’s recent civil suits, he began modelling in the Midwest when he was in elementary school, later moving to New York. He relocated to the Los Angeles area with his family in the mid-1990s “at the suggestion of his talent manager to further his acting career, and continued to model.”

Egan attended a small private school in the San Fernando Valley, the suits say, where one of his classmates introduced him to an older brother, Chad Shackley, who lived in the Encino mansion that would play a central role in Egan’s allegations.

Shackley shared the home with Marc Collins-Rector, co-founder of a company called Digital Entertainment Network (DEN). A third DEN co-founder was Brock Pierce, who joined the company at age 17 following an early career as a child actor, including starring roles in the first two Mighty Ducks films.

DEN was an early attempt to create and stream programming over the internet, and it attracted outside investments from companies and individuals, including Singer, Neuman, Ancier and Goddard, according to Egan’s complaints.

His suits allege that the Encino estate shared by Collins-Rector and Shackley became notorious for parties that “featured sexual contact between adult males and the many teenage boys who were present.” Egan claims he was put on the DEN payroll for about $2,100 a week “in an attempt to manipulate his compliance with the sexual demands of those adults” who frequented the estate.

The allegations have triggered debates at industry lunch spots and studio back lots throughout Hollywood. To some, the party scene described by Egan has long been an open secret.

“The party culture does exist,” said Anne Henry of BizParentz Foundation, a support group for parents whose children work in the entertainment industry, who was not referring specifically to Egan’s allegations. “It is a party culture of older teenage boys.”

Others are sceptical of the lawsuits. Producer Gavin Polone, whose credits include HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, said the lawsuits are “a shakedown from people who want money and publicity.”

“To me, this is a persecution of rich gay people, that’s how I see it,” Polone said.

The lawsuits filed by Egan have drawn widespread attention. The 48-year-old Singer is one of Hollywood’s most bankable directors, with credits including Superman Returns and the Oscar-winning The Usual Suspects. The other defendants are also prominent. Ancier is a former NBC and WB television executive, Neuman is the former president of Walt Disney Television and Goddard chairs an entertainment design firm.

Egan filed the cases in Hawaii in mid-April, alleging some of the abuse occurred on a private estate on Oahu. In filing the lawsuits, he took advantage of a 2012 Hawaii law that opened a two-year window for alleged victims of child sex abuse to file civil charges even if the statute of limitations had expired. The two-year period ended on April 24. He is seeking at least $1 million in damages in total.

All four of the defendants or their representatives have said that they were never in Hawaii with Egan.

Attorneys in the cases are scheduled to meet in July for pre-trial conferences.

Egan’s lawsuits led an anonymous British citizen to file a complaint in US District Court in Los Angeles against Singer and Goddard on May 7, alleging he was sexually abused by both men when he was a teenager. Attorney Herman, who also represents the unnamed plaintiff, said the alleged victim, now 25, was inspired to sue after learning of Egan’s efforts. Attorneys for Singer and Goddard denied the new allegations.

The lawsuits sidelined Singer just as 20th Century Fox was ramping up the marketing machine for X-Men: Days of Future Past, a hoped-for summer blockbuster starring Hugh Jackman and Jennifer Lawrence.

Singer withdrew from a planned appearance at WonderCon in Anaheim, California, last month, and later said he would not do any publicity for the picture.

“I do not want these fictitious claims to divert ANY attention from X-Men: Days of Future Past,” Singer said in a statement.

Fox declined to comment, saying in a statement that it was a “personal matter” for Singer.

“These are serious allegations, and they will be resolved in the appropriate forum,” the studio said.