Bryan Singer accuser's abuse claims denied by Hollywood executives
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Version 0 of 1. Three prominent executives accused of involvement in a Hollywood sex-abuse ring have strongly denied the claims against them. David Neuman, Garth Ancier and Gary Goddard were named on Monday by alleged victim Michael Egan, who last week filed a suit against X-Men director Bryan Singer for allegedly abusing him as a 17-year-old in 1999, when Egan was trying to break into acting. The three men are now also the subject of civil lawsuits filed by Egan's lawyer, Jeff Herman. Lawyers for Goddard, who directed the 1987 children's fantasy Masters of the Universe, described Egan's suit as "without merit" in an email to the Hollywood Reporter. A legal spokesman for Ancier, an erstwhile executive at Fox Broadcasting, Warner Bros and NBC, dismissed the allegations as "demonstrably untrue" and denied her client had ever visited the estate in Hawaii where the abuse is alleged to have taken place. Neuman, the former president of Disney television, took to Twitter to deny the claims against him, describing them as "completely false". He added: "They are whole-cloth lies with zero basis in reality or truth. Sickening, and very evil, for anyone to lie like that, let alone in a legal document. Stay tuned; I will set the record straight." Singer was accused of raping Egan and forcing him to take cocaine in 1999 via a lawsuit filed on Thursday in Hawaii. The film-maker, whose new X-Men film Days of Future Past opens in the US next month, has vehemently denied the allegations against him. "The claims made against Bryan Singer are completely without merit," said his lawyer, Marty Singer. Egan's suits, filed by Herman amid a blaze of publicity, allege Neuman, Ancier and Goddard were part of the same "sex ring" as Singer. "We've alleged that there's a Hollywood sex ring, one of several sex rings," said Herman at a press conference in Los Angeles on Monday, the second to have been held in as many weeks. Egan's mother, Bonnie Mound, said at the second press conference that she went to the LAPD, FBI and various media outlets in 1999 after discovering the alleged abuse. She said nothing came of her intervention, though she was interviewed by the FBI. |