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\nMichael Egan, photographed by Christopher Anderson\/Magnum Photos\/New York Magazine\u00a0<\/span>Photo: Christopher Anderson\/Magnum Photos<\/cite><\/h5>\n<\/div>\nHe couldn\u2019t see past the walls at first, but then the wrought-iron gate swung open and the limo he was riding in pulled past the gate, and Michael Egan got his first view of the M&C estate.<\/p>\n
The 12,600-square-foot Spanish Colonial, surrounded by immense columns and gaping bay windows, was previously owned by the rap mogul Suge Knight. Inside was a home theater and more than one aquarium. Outside he could see a Ferrari and Lamborghini, a tennis court, a swimming pool, and a hot tub big enough for a dozen people. To the neighbors, it might have seemed like just another Encino McMansion. To a 16-year-old from Nebraska, it seemed like everything he thought Hollywood would be.<\/p>\n
Egan was slim with dark hair, pale skin, and a bright smile. The son of divorced parents, he had been a popular kid who dreamed of being Tom Cruise. He\u2019d attended his first model search when he was 12, an open call at a shopping mall in Omaha, which quickly led to a summer in New York, where he booked dozens of modeling jobs. When, a year later, his manager told his mother, Bonnie Mound, the next step was a move to L.A., neither of them needed convincing. Mound rented an apartment in the Valley and enrolled him in a school designed to accommodate the schedules of working actors.<\/p>\n
It was one of his classmates there who, in June 1998, first brought him to the M&C estate, named for two of its occupants, Marc Collins-Rector and Chad Shackley. Those men, along with a third housemate, Brock Pierce, had recently been celebrated in the Los Angeles\u00a0Times\u00a0<\/i>for creating a business that would make TV shows for the internet called Digital Entertainment Network, or DEN. They\u2019d poached their president, David Neuman, from his job running Disney TV. David Geffen had showed interest in the company, socializing at the estate with other investors who, Egan was told, could be very helpful to him in his career. There was Garth Ancier, who at 28 had been the first programmer of Fox television and who would go on to high-level positions at NBC and the WB network. There was Gary Goddard, the director and Broadway producer. And there was the director Bryan Singer, who had just made his name with\u00a0The Usual Suspects\u00a0<\/i>and was about to join the A-list with the\u00a0X-Men\u00a0<\/i>film franchise.<\/p>\n
What happened behind the walls of the M&C estate over the next two years is a matter of intense dispute. If you believe Michael Egan, he was groomed to submit to a life of abuse in what was essentially a pedophilic sex den. If you believe the men Egan accused\u2014including Singer, who has been lying low since\u00a0Egan filed a civil lawsuit against him in late April<\/a>\u2014he is a shakedown artist, contriving an abuse scandal, staging press conferences, and participating in an upcoming documentary, all in the hopes of a payout. Much of Hollywood has been watching Egan\u2019s case unfold all summer, and not only for its lurid details. Was Egan just another Hollywood newcomer who traded sex for entr\u00e9e into a business famous for allowing that very exchange, or is he the most public example of something more troubling: the industry\u2019s rampant sexual abuse?<\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pixel.nymag.com\/imgs\/daily\/vulture\/2014\/09\/05\/magazine\/05-michael-egan-2.w245.h368.jpg\")
\nMichael Egan, age 15, in 1998.\u00a0Photo: Herman\/Corbis<\/cite><\/h5>\n<\/figure>\nEgan is standing alone,<\/strong>\u00a0awaiting my arrival at the baggage claim of McCarran airport in Las Vegas, the city where he\u2019s lived since 2002. It\u2019s a bright afternoon in June, two months since he held his explosive press conference at the Four Seasons on Wilshire Boulevard, tearful mother on one side, lawyer on the other. Now he\u2019s in the middle of the backlash: denials, motions for dismissal, countersuits, anonymous attacks against his character, all of which just make him more eager to tell his story.<\/p>\n\u201cJune 23 will be two years of me not having a drink,\u201d he tells me as we walk to his car. He is tan but rail-thin, and a certain jittery frailty comes through as he talks. His manner is like that of a lot of people in the early years of recovery\u2014overcome by the relief they feel in talking at length about what they\u2019ve been through. Quite often, Egan says, he still feels seized by emotions he can\u2019t manage. \u201cThese people put so much fear in you when you\u2019re a kid. But I still have fear. I had a dream last night that I was walking into a deposition and got shot.\u201d He smiles and shakes his head. \u201cThat\u2019s sick to think that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I spoke with Egan, both in person in Las Vegas and later over a steady stream of phone calls and emails and texts, his anguish became clear, even if the facts surrounding it remained stubbornly out of reach. Everything he says happened to him has been roundly denied, and every allegation lacks documentation. He was almost certainly taken advantage of (though by whom and to what extent has yet to be proved). It\u2019s also true that he had his own motives for insinuating himself into the world of the M&C estate. Soon after he moved to L.A., he endured his first unsuccessful TV-pilot season. On the audition circuit, he ran into the same teenage boys, all as beautiful as he was, at every casting. What he needed were connections. The month he first visited the estate, DEN had premiered its debut program,\u00a0Chad\u2019s World.<\/i>\u00a0Practically no one watched the show,\u00a0<\/i>but the company payroll was staggering: $12 million in salaries with only one series in production.<\/p>\n
After a few visits, DEN\u2019s executives offered Egan $600 a week to do odd jobs around the estate. He said yes, and soon found himself embraced by the DEN family. He was given a starring role in a new DEN show called\u00a0The Royal Standard,\u00a0<\/i>directed by Randall Kleiser, who had directed\u00a0Grease\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0The Blue Lagoon<\/i>; he was paid $1,000 more a week. He hung out at\u00a0Independence Day\u00a0<\/i>producer Dean Devlin\u2019s house and did screen tests for Roland Emmerich\u2019s movie\u00a0The Patriot<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Freaks and Geeks.<\/i>\u00a0Along with the other teenagers he met through DEN, he was a regular at a place called Barfly, where he\u2019d get so drunk he\u2019d throw up. The estate, meanwhile, became famous for its parties, which were stocked with attractive young men. \u201cI\u2019ve spent some time at the Playboy mansion,\u201d one person connected to DEN said later to the New York\u00a0Post.<\/i>\u00a0\u201cThis place makes it look like a trailer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The grooming, according to the lawsuit, started almost on day one. Egan remembers being pulled aside by Collins-Rector, Pierce, and Shackley for hourlong one-on-one lectures about how they had gaydar and they knew that Egan really was gay (he says he is not). He remembers the ban on the wearing of clothes in the pool or hot-tub areas. And he remembers being locked inside a gun closet for resisting Collins-Rector\u2019s advances. He also remembers the drugs\u2014Valium, Vicodin, Xanax, Percocet, ecstasy, roofies. In the years to come, several other young men would come forward to talk about inappropriate behavior by the executives of DEN. There was a boy named Daniel who, according to a\u00a02007 account of DEN\u2019s rise and fall in\u00a0<\/a>Radar<\/a>,<\/i>\u00a0wrote a suicide note that his brother intercepted before he could act on it: \u201cI can\u2019t go on. I let them use me as a sex tool. I let those assholes do all those terrible things to me. Good-bye.\u201d There are several boys, including Egan, who would recall Collins-\u00adRector aiming a gun at them and threatening to pull the trigger. And there was the boy who, in 2000, filed a lawsuit in New Jersey claiming Collins-\u00adRector repeatedly sexually abused him from 1993 to 1996. Collins-Rector denied those allegations but then settled the suit shortly before leaving the company.<\/p>\nWhat made Egan\u2019s accusations news this spring was that he didn\u2019t just name DEN\u2019s executives; he named prominent members of the gay Hollywood elite, including Singer. Egan\u2019s lawsuit describes an incident in the estate\u2019s pool when Egan was 17 years old. Collins-Rector allegedly passed Egan to Singer in the hot tub, where Egan \u201cwas made to sit on\u201d Singer\u2019s lap; Singer gave him a drink, mentioned finding him a movie role, told him he was sexy, and masturbated and fellated him. When Egan resisted, the complaint reads, Singer forced Egan\u2019s \u201chead underwater to make [Egan] perform oral sex upon him. When [Egan] pulled his head out of the water in order to breathe, [Singer] demanded that he continue, which [Egan] refused. [Singer] then forced [Egan] to continue performing oral sex upon him outside of the pool, and subsequently forcibly sodomized\u201d him.<\/p>\n
Egan says Singer\u2019s behavior continued on trips the whole group took together to the Paul Mitchell estate in Hawaii. One night, the complaint alleges, Egan came across Singer in the pool area, whereupon Singer \u201cput a handful of cocaine\u201d under Egan\u2019s nose, then \u201cforced him to inhale it.\u201d Singer entered the pool, where he \u201cnonconsensually masturbated\u201d Egan; pushed his head underwater and made him \u201corally copulate him\u201d; and eventually brought Egan to his room, where \u201che again anally raped\u201d him.<\/p>\n
Singer\u2019s official response to the accusations is that they\u2019re fiction. \u201cBryan never acted inappropriately toward Mr. Egan,\u201d says Singer\u2019s lawyer, Marty Singer (no relation). \u201cAll of his claims are lies.\u201d The lawyer\u2019s statements have consistently addressed just the specific claims in the lawsuit, neither confirming nor denying that Singer and Egan had sex or knew each other; he did not return messages for this story.<\/p>\n
On the many nights Egan remembers sleeping over at the M&C estate, he says his mother would call to make sure it was all right, and an adult would come to the phone and assure her all was well. And, in one respect, it was. Suddenly, things were happening for him career-wise. To walk away from M&C would mean telling himself he wasn\u2019t cut out for Hollywood. When I ask Egan\u2019s mother about that now, she bursts into tears. \u201cWe were raised in the Midwest, and we try to find the good in people,\u201d Mound says. \u201cAnd we went to New York and never had any problems, and he just seemed to be a success. He was just so happy and having so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over lunch, Egan comes back again and again to the notion of grooming\u2014that a 16-year-old boy could be made to go along with almost anything, given the right motivation. \u201cI was never a willing participant in what they did to me,\u201d Egan says. \u201cThey ripped in and stole my soul. I became a robot. I had such fear instilled in me I was a nonfunctioning person. I may have become more of a compliant victim, but I was never willing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Egan didn\u2019t choose<\/strong>\u00a0the word\u00a0compliant<\/i>\u00a0arbitrarily. The word is commonly used in abuse cases with teenage victims who, unlike toddlers or tweens, may have some degree of agency when interacting sexually with adults. These cases tend to follow a pattern: The abusers engage in a seduction process that normalizes the behavior until the victims go along with it\u2014still victims, but also compliant participants. Legally, if the victim is under the age of consent, proving sexual abuse should be relatively straightforward, but that gray area of compliance often clouds the issue, making juries (and the public) less sympathetic to claims of abuse. Can you be exploited if you consent? What if you only say you were abused years later, after your career has dried up?<\/p>\nSexual abuse in Hollywood has long been the subject of speculation. \u201cIt\u2019s common enough that every boy child actor would have met a pedophile in their career at some point,\u201d says Anne Henry, the mother of three child \u00adperformers and co-founder of the\u00a0BizParentz Foundation<\/a>, a group for show-business families. Henry started BizParentz more than a decade ago to help families navigate the industry, but since then she has heard of hundreds of instances in which young actors say they\u2019ve been harassed or abused.<\/p>\nEvery few years, accusations surface in court, most of which fizzle with a plea. The accusers\u2019 names are usually not public in these cases, and when actors like Corey Feldman do open up publicly, they don\u2019t typically name their abusers. Egan\u2019s case is one of the few where both the victim and the accused are publicly known, in part because victims have their own incentives for staying quiet. \u201cWhen they were on the gravy train and they were the guy\u2019s favorite, that was great for six months, two years,\u201d says Kenneth Lanning, an FBI special agent of 30 years, now retired, who has investigated every variety of sexual-abuse case. \u201cThen their careers fall apart. Now the guy\u2019s finished with you and not returning your calls. Now you\u2019re pissed.\u201d<\/p>\n
For nearly two years,<\/strong>\u00a0Egan was making more money than he knew how to spend, going out to the Palm and taking trips on private jets, and, of course, being promised auditions. Then, one day, one promise didn\u2019t pan out. \u201cX-Men\u00a0<\/i>was a job that Bryan Singer said he was going to give me,\u201d Egan says. When Egan\u2019s DEN co-worker Alex Burton got a part, the role of a mutant named Pyro, and Egan didn\u2019t, Egan says he was told it was because Burton was 18, a legal adult, and therefore able to work longer hours and with no supervision on set.<\/p>\nThen, the executives of DEN started pressuring Egan to become legally emancipated from his parents, which would allow him to work under adult work rules. His mother was offered stock in the company in exchange for permission; she declined. By then, it was 1999, and DEN was falling apart. Collins-Rector was facing his first lawsuit for alleged abuse, and DEN\u2019s lawyer was asking everyone at the estate, including Egan, to sign nondisclosure agreements in exchange for stock. He didn\u2019t sign. He still might not have walked away without the help of two other DEN employees. Alex Burton and Mark Ryan were both older than Egan and determined to call the police. Egan says they forced the issue one night at Egan\u2019s house by telling his mother what had been happening. Bonnie Mound was shattered by the news. \u201cI was still petrified,\u201d Egan says, \u201cbut I started to get stronger once we were talking through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mound found the boys a lawyer, Daniel Cherin, who along with law enforcement encouraged the boys to collect more evidence. \u201cSo we went back and copied everything in the file cabinet,\u201d Egan says. \u201cWe had photos of the drug bags and child pornography in different cabinets, and video of the gun closet they locked me in.\u201d In early 2000, Egan was still sending emails to DEN\u2019s executives, asking for money and even looking to hang out. The lawyers for Singer and the other defendants call this evidence of a shakedown; Egan says now it was part of the effort to collect evidence.<\/p>\n
Egan\u2019s great escape proved anticlimactic. The police and the FBI never charged anyone\u2014Egan and his mother still aren\u2019t sure why. \u201cMy mom heard from them once or twice, but that\u2019s it.\u2005\u201d The three boys filed a civil lawsuit in 2000 for sexual abuse against Collins-Rector, Shackley, and Pierce. They did not name Singer, Ancier, Neuman, or Goddard. Egan\u2019s lawyer, Cherin, told them he didn\u2019t have enough evidence to connect the others to the abuse\u2014at least not like he had on the three men who actually lived at the house. \u201cThe system doesn\u2019t reward the he-said-she-said scenario,\u201d Cherin tells me. He believed the high-profile targets had the resources to bury them in motions and counter-investigations. \u201cI\u2019m not a daredevil. I don\u2019t get paid to take chances.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Egan, with his mother\u2019s help, worked to litigate against the DEN executives, sitting for depositions and sifting through documents, the defendants fled the country without contesting the suit. The court awarded Egan and his fellow plaintiffs a $4.5 million default judgment, of which Egan says he collected just $25,000. The absence of consequences seemed to confirm everything Collins-Rector and the others had said: They were powerful enough to get away with it; no one would ever believe the boys; everyone who might help him would be too afraid of retribution to come forward. \u201cI was pushed by my mom to talk to the government, to law enforcement. I was scared shitless,\u201d he says. \u201cTo see that nothing happened\u2014that if you ever did come out, that law enforcement never did anything, so who could you really trust\u2014that was a hard thing for me to get over.\u201d<\/p>\n
He left Hollywood, and after a couple of years with his father in Nebraska, he moved to Las Vegas, working with his brother building theme parks. He married a woman he met there in 2005. But he couldn\u2019t seem to put enough distance between him and what had happened at M&C. \u201cI thought I could shove all these feelings down\u2014\u2018I\u2019m a big man, I can deal with this.\u2019 But it was like dealing with a madman in your brain.\u201d He was drinking hard, often alongside the only friend he\u2019d made at DEN, fellow plaintiff Mark Ryan. In 2010, Ryan had an alcohol-withdrawal-induced stroke while trying to sober up; he never fully recovered and relies on a motorized wheelchair, barely able to communicate. \u201cI have a friend who has basically lost his life,\u201d Egan says. \u201cWhenever I think I\u2019m in a bad spot, I think Mark would trade places with me in a second.\u201d<\/p>\n
Egan kept drinking for two more years until 2012, when his wife left him. \u201cI loaded my two dogs in my SUV and drove across the country while in withdrawal. I was having flashes in my eyes, I was sweating like a maniac.\u201d Egan joined AA, attending 200 meetings in the first 90 days. Then he finally found another community to envelop him the way that DEN had\u2014not just the recovery community, but the advocacy community for victims of sexual abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pixel.nymag.com\/imgs\/daily\/vulture\/2014\/09\/05\/magazine\/05-michael-egan-4.nocrop.w529.h160.jpg\")
\nFrom left: Chad Shackley, Brock Pierce, Marc Collins-Rector, and Bryan Singer<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nIn the spring of 2013,<\/strong>\u00a0a year into Egan\u2019s sobriety, his mother passed along a message from BizParents. A production company was planning a documentary about sexual abuse in Hollywood, and they wanted to interview Egan. The documentary is directed by Amy Berg, whose Oscar-nominated 2006 film\u00a0Deliver Us From Evil<\/i>\u00a0examined an infamous California Catholic Church sex-abuse case. While Berg and her team won\u2019t comment on the film or even reveal its title, she did tell one reporter in April that Egan will be in it. \u201cIt\u2019s much bigger than anything about the one case,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is a huge problem. It\u2019s pervasive in Hollywood, and the time to explore it is now.\u201d Egan, who\u2019s seen it, says about a half-dozen other men like him are interviewed, none of whom he knew beforehand.<\/p>\nEgan suddenly felt like he was part of a movement. A producer with Berg\u2019s documentary referred Egan to a sexual-abuse survivors\u2019 group called the\u00a0Let Go \u2026 Let Peace Come In Foundation<\/a>, which was started by a sexual-abuse survivor named Peter Pelullo, who offered Egan more affirmation. \u201cGod knows how many children this has happened to from this situation in Hollywood,\u201d Pelullo says. The foundation referred Egan to a trauma therapist, whom he still sees. Her most important message, Egan says, was that he wasn\u2019t at fault. She explained to him how abusers groom their victims and wrangle compliance.<\/p>\nIt was his experience with the survivors\u2019 group that made Egan decide he needed to publicly accuse his abusers\u2014all of them. Last fall, he and his mother went lawyer shopping. At least one prominent sexual-abuse litigator turned Egan down: \u201cI believe every word he\u2019s saying,\u201d the lawyer told me. \u201cBut he\u2019s dead on the statute of limitations.\u201d California law allows for accusers age 26 and younger, or three years from the date they discover their trauma. Egan was 31 and had discovered his trauma as early as 2000, as his old lawsuit clearly demonstrated.<\/p>\n
Then Egan found Jeffrey Herman, an ambitious lawyer out of Boca Raton who has won tens of millions of dollars in judgments against the Miami Catholic archdiocese and who has used the money to fund long-shot cases, most recently a\u00a0failed set of claims against Kevin Clash<\/a>, the voice of\u00a0Sesame Street\u2019<\/i>s Elmo. Herman was once barred from practicing law for a year and a half for violating the Florida bar\u2019s conflict-of-interest rules when he failed to disclose an investment that competed with a client\u2019s business. But he seemed to be the sort of risk-taker Egan needed\u2014a lawyer willing to take on a bumpy case if it meant opening up a new area of litigation.<\/p>\nI visited with Herman at his office in June a week or so before I met Egan. Tan and broad-shouldered, Herman said his investigators spent five months vetting Egan\u2019s claims, turning up in the process an unpublished interview Egan gave to a reporter in 2001, in which he explicitly named Ancier, Goddard, Neuman, and Singer as his abusers. The interview helped convince Herman that Egan had a case. His staff also spoke with several men who\u2019d been at the M&C estate. Some were too afraid to be named in the initial complaint, but Egan\u2019s friend Mark Ryan, his father Fred tells me, was deposed from his wheelchair in Cincinnati and confirmed the abuse. Herman planned to get around the statute of limitations in California by filing a civil suit in Hawaii, which has a law allowing civil actions in abuse cases where the statute of limitations has expired. The trips to Hawaii, therefore, became the centerpiece of the suit.<\/p>\n
Herman told me that he had been looking for a Hollywood case even before Egan came along. \u201cI\u2019m always looking for what the next church is going to be,\u201d Herman said. \u201cWhere there\u2019s power, there\u2019s an abuse of power.\u201d As star clients go, Herman said Egan was no more problematic than any other. \u201cHe\u2019s lost in a way, because this is really horrific stuff. He\u2019s fragile. Yet he\u2019s sort of determined now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herman was bracing himself for when, inevitably, the other side would dredge up the many contradictory statements Egan had said over the years and use them against him. \u201cMike\u2019s story is very complex,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have these inconsistencies, where his mind is disassociated from some of the abuse.\u201d The most important thing Herman could do to bolster Egan\u2019s case, he said, was to turn it into a beacon to draw in others. There\u2019s strength in numbers. \u201cThe best way to get evidence is, I do a press conference,\u201d he told me. \u201cThere\u2019s always more victims.\u201d<\/p>\n
On April 17,<\/strong>\u00a0Egan and Herman made their announcement at the Four Seasons, unveiling a lawsuit naming Singer, whose\u00a0X-Men: Days of Future Past\u00a0<\/i>was about to score one of the biggest opening weekends on record. A few days later, Egan and Herman announced similar suits against Ancier, Goddard, and Neuman. \u201cWe\u2019ve alleged that there\u2019s a Hollywood sex ring, one of several sex rings,\u201d Herman said. \u201cThe door is open now. If these investigations pan out, I will be filing many more cases.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cThe allegations against me are outrageous, vicious, and completely false,\u201d Bryan Singer said in a statement a few days later, promising that \u201cthe facts will show this to be the sick, twisted shakedown it is.\u201d Stories soon surfaced of Singer\u2019s own parties, stocked, reportedly, with twinks his underlings thought he might like. Several published accounts, most quoting unnamed sources, described how Singer meets most of the younger men he dates through trusted friends who act as intermediaries\u2014or, less charitably, procurers. Yet those who defended Singer painted a picture of the director as anything but predatory, saying he is powerful but cloistered, and, like many A-listers, dependent on friends to introduce him to new men, and that he is scrupulous about the age of his partners. Still others noted how prominent gay men are also often easy targets for these kinds of allegations, which feed into ugly homophobic stereotypes about gay men and pedophilia.<\/p>\n
All four of the accused men said they\u2019d never been to Hawaii with Egan, never raped him, never mistreated him. Bryan Singer\u2019s lawyer Marty Singer pointed out that his client had never been approached or interviewed by the FBI back when Egan filed his first lawsuit, nor was he named in that lawsuit. He accused Herman of grandstanding, \u201cusing these lawsuits as an opportunity to promote himself and his law firm,\u201d and added that his \u201creputation as an attorney leaves a lot to be desired,\u201d noting the harsh wording of Herman\u2019s suspension from the Florida bar for \u201cengaging in misconduct involving fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then came the counteroffensive: leaks to the media of emails from Egan to DEN asking for money. The media got hold of a deposition by Egan from the earlier litigation in which Egan said he\u2019d never left the continental United States with anyone he was accusing of abuse. Now that the case hanged on the Hawaii trip, this statement was especially problematic. Herman, who claimed to have witnesses placing Singer in Hawaii with Egan, responded by saying he wasn\u2019t \u201csure how [Egan] interpreted the \u2018continental United States.\u2019\u2005\u201d<\/p>\n
Herman soon found another client, a British national, a few years younger than Egan, who\u00a0filed a similar complaint against Singer and Goddard<\/a>. In response, Singer\u2019s lawyer accused Herman of fabricating the substance of the new claim, and threatened to seek sanctions against him \u201cfor his reckless, unethical behavior.\u201d<\/p>\nIn late June, Egan went to a Goo Goo Dolls concert at the Red Rock Hotel and Casino, where, he says, a stranger cornered him in the restroom, blocking the exit for more than a minute. \u201cHe told me, \u2018You need to go away! You need to go away! This is going to get intense!\u2019\u2005\u201d Then he served Egan with a civil suit filed by Garth Ancier, who was suing Egan, Herman, and his Hawaii co-counsel Mark Gallagher for malicious prosecution. The next day, Egan filed a police report for harassment.<\/p>\n
Still, between the attention and the coming documentary, Egan felt unburdened for the first time in years: \u201cI already think whatever happens with the case, whatever legal strategies we have to do, I feel already we\u2019ve won.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just days later,<\/strong>\u00a0Egan called me in a panic. His lawyer wanted him to settle with Singer, and Egan was appalled. \u201cI would look like a complete liar if I came out and said the things he wants me to say!\u201d<\/p>\nThe details trickled out in the weeks that followed. Five more alleged victims of Singer\u2019s had come forward to Herman, and at least some of them had accusations within the statute of limitations. Under the proposed settlement, those five accusers would split the lion\u2019s share of the settlement, which one source close to the case says amounted to $20 million. Egan would get a mere $100,000.<\/p>\n
The money bothered him, but the confidentiality demands of the settlement bothered him more. For Egan, being silenced by his own lawyer felt like a new betrayal. \u201cI look at what Jeff did to me as no better than the pedophiles,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Egan refused to sign, and soon after, Herman dropped him as a client, applying to withdraw as counsel in all four of Egan\u2019s lawsuits. Herman hired his own attorney to represent him in Ancier\u2019s malicious prosecution lawsuit; he declined to comment any further for this story, and he has yet to send Egan the bulk of his case file. In late August, adrift without a lawyer or most of the documents from his own case, Egan\u00a0temporarily pulled the plug on his lawsuits<\/a>. The court dismissed his claim against Singer without prejudice, which would allow him to refile should he find a new lawyer. \u201cHerman\u2019s created such a mess for me that nobody wants to touch it,\u201d Egan said during another anguished phone call. \u201cIn all honesty, based on what Herman\u2019s done, I\u2019m looking to sue Herman. I just think to myself,\u00a0How does he put his head on the pillow at night knowing what he did to me?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\nEgan has run into difficulties in bringing his case to the court of public opinion as well. The Amy Berg documentary, which he hoped would bolster his claims, has been slow to find distribution. While this fall\u2019s DOC NYC festival has accepted the film, discussions with Mark Cuban\u2019s Magnolia Pictures went nowhere. One source who\u2019s seen the film says it\u2019s emotionally powerful, with several shocking moments, but that the subject is too ripped-from-the-headlines for theaters, and perhaps better for TV or Netflix. Donna Daniels, a spokesperson for Amy Berg, says the filmmakers have \u201cmade the decision to self-distribute.\u201d<\/p>\n
What hurt Egan the most, perhaps, was that he\u2019d ever thought this could have turned out any other way. He\u2019d been warned by everyone, starting with three of his old DEN co-workers, whom Herman\u2019s investigators had approached. \u201cThey told me, \u2018Mike, we don\u2019t want to get involved. You\u2019ll never beat these people, they have too much power.\u2019 I\u2019ve tried to help the cause and all that. But I think,\u00a0Man, I should have listened to them.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
\nMichael Egan, age 15, in 1998.\u00a0Photo: Herman\/Corbis<\/cite><\/h5>\n<\/figure>\nEgan is standing alone,<\/strong>\u00a0awaiting my arrival at the baggage claim of McCarran airport in Las Vegas, the city where he\u2019s lived since 2002. It\u2019s a bright afternoon in June, two months since he held his explosive press conference at the Four Seasons on Wilshire Boulevard, tearful mother on one side, lawyer on the other. Now he\u2019s in the middle of the backlash: denials, motions for dismissal, countersuits, anonymous attacks against his character, all of which just make him more eager to tell his story.<\/p>\n\u201cJune 23 will be two years of me not having a drink,\u201d he tells me as we walk to his car. He is tan but rail-thin, and a certain jittery frailty comes through as he talks. His manner is like that of a lot of people in the early years of recovery\u2014overcome by the relief they feel in talking at length about what they\u2019ve been through. Quite often, Egan says, he still feels seized by emotions he can\u2019t manage. \u201cThese people put so much fear in you when you\u2019re a kid. But I still have fear. I had a dream last night that I was walking into a deposition and got shot.\u201d He smiles and shakes his head. \u201cThat\u2019s sick to think that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I spoke with Egan, both in person in Las Vegas and later over a steady stream of phone calls and emails and texts, his anguish became clear, even if the facts surrounding it remained stubbornly out of reach. Everything he says happened to him has been roundly denied, and every allegation lacks documentation. He was almost certainly taken advantage of (though by whom and to what extent has yet to be proved). It\u2019s also true that he had his own motives for insinuating himself into the world of the M&C estate. Soon after he moved to L.A., he endured his first unsuccessful TV-pilot season. On the audition circuit, he ran into the same teenage boys, all as beautiful as he was, at every casting. What he needed were connections. The month he first visited the estate, DEN had premiered its debut program,\u00a0Chad\u2019s World.<\/i>\u00a0Practically no one watched the show,\u00a0<\/i>but the company payroll was staggering: $12 million in salaries with only one series in production.<\/p>\n
After a few visits, DEN\u2019s executives offered Egan $600 a week to do odd jobs around the estate. He said yes, and soon found himself embraced by the DEN family. He was given a starring role in a new DEN show called\u00a0The Royal Standard,\u00a0<\/i>directed by Randall Kleiser, who had directed\u00a0Grease\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0The Blue Lagoon<\/i>; he was paid $1,000 more a week. He hung out at\u00a0Independence Day\u00a0<\/i>producer Dean Devlin\u2019s house and did screen tests for Roland Emmerich\u2019s movie\u00a0The Patriot<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Freaks and Geeks.<\/i>\u00a0Along with the other teenagers he met through DEN, he was a regular at a place called Barfly, where he\u2019d get so drunk he\u2019d throw up. The estate, meanwhile, became famous for its parties, which were stocked with attractive young men. \u201cI\u2019ve spent some time at the Playboy mansion,\u201d one person connected to DEN said later to the New York\u00a0Post.<\/i>\u00a0\u201cThis place makes it look like a trailer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The grooming, according to the lawsuit, started almost on day one. Egan remembers being pulled aside by Collins-Rector, Pierce, and Shackley for hourlong one-on-one lectures about how they had gaydar and they knew that Egan really was gay (he says he is not). He remembers the ban on the wearing of clothes in the pool or hot-tub areas. And he remembers being locked inside a gun closet for resisting Collins-Rector\u2019s advances. He also remembers the drugs\u2014Valium, Vicodin, Xanax, Percocet, ecstasy, roofies. In the years to come, several other young men would come forward to talk about inappropriate behavior by the executives of DEN. There was a boy named Daniel who, according to a\u00a02007 account of DEN\u2019s rise and fall in\u00a0<\/a>Radar<\/a>,<\/i>\u00a0wrote a suicide note that his brother intercepted before he could act on it: \u201cI can\u2019t go on. I let them use me as a sex tool. I let those assholes do all those terrible things to me. Good-bye.\u201d There are several boys, including Egan, who would recall Collins-\u00adRector aiming a gun at them and threatening to pull the trigger. And there was the boy who, in 2000, filed a lawsuit in New Jersey claiming Collins-\u00adRector repeatedly sexually abused him from 1993 to 1996. Collins-Rector denied those allegations but then settled the suit shortly before leaving the company.<\/p>\nWhat made Egan\u2019s accusations news this spring was that he didn\u2019t just name DEN\u2019s executives; he named prominent members of the gay Hollywood elite, including Singer. Egan\u2019s lawsuit describes an incident in the estate\u2019s pool when Egan was 17 years old. Collins-Rector allegedly passed Egan to Singer in the hot tub, where Egan \u201cwas made to sit on\u201d Singer\u2019s lap; Singer gave him a drink, mentioned finding him a movie role, told him he was sexy, and masturbated and fellated him. When Egan resisted, the complaint reads, Singer forced Egan\u2019s \u201chead underwater to make [Egan] perform oral sex upon him. When [Egan] pulled his head out of the water in order to breathe, [Singer] demanded that he continue, which [Egan] refused. [Singer] then forced [Egan] to continue performing oral sex upon him outside of the pool, and subsequently forcibly sodomized\u201d him.<\/p>\n
Egan says Singer\u2019s behavior continued on trips the whole group took together to the Paul Mitchell estate in Hawaii. One night, the complaint alleges, Egan came across Singer in the pool area, whereupon Singer \u201cput a handful of cocaine\u201d under Egan\u2019s nose, then \u201cforced him to inhale it.\u201d Singer entered the pool, where he \u201cnonconsensually masturbated\u201d Egan; pushed his head underwater and made him \u201corally copulate him\u201d; and eventually brought Egan to his room, where \u201che again anally raped\u201d him.<\/p>\n
Singer\u2019s official response to the accusations is that they\u2019re fiction. \u201cBryan never acted inappropriately toward Mr. Egan,\u201d says Singer\u2019s lawyer, Marty Singer (no relation). \u201cAll of his claims are lies.\u201d The lawyer\u2019s statements have consistently addressed just the specific claims in the lawsuit, neither confirming nor denying that Singer and Egan had sex or knew each other; he did not return messages for this story.<\/p>\n
On the many nights Egan remembers sleeping over at the M&C estate, he says his mother would call to make sure it was all right, and an adult would come to the phone and assure her all was well. And, in one respect, it was. Suddenly, things were happening for him career-wise. To walk away from M&C would mean telling himself he wasn\u2019t cut out for Hollywood. When I ask Egan\u2019s mother about that now, she bursts into tears. \u201cWe were raised in the Midwest, and we try to find the good in people,\u201d Mound says. \u201cAnd we went to New York and never had any problems, and he just seemed to be a success. He was just so happy and having so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over lunch, Egan comes back again and again to the notion of grooming\u2014that a 16-year-old boy could be made to go along with almost anything, given the right motivation. \u201cI was never a willing participant in what they did to me,\u201d Egan says. \u201cThey ripped in and stole my soul. I became a robot. I had such fear instilled in me I was a nonfunctioning person. I may have become more of a compliant victim, but I was never willing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Egan didn\u2019t choose<\/strong>\u00a0the word\u00a0compliant<\/i>\u00a0arbitrarily. The word is commonly used in abuse cases with teenage victims who, unlike toddlers or tweens, may have some degree of agency when interacting sexually with adults. These cases tend to follow a pattern: The abusers engage in a seduction process that normalizes the behavior until the victims go along with it\u2014still victims, but also compliant participants. Legally, if the victim is under the age of consent, proving sexual abuse should be relatively straightforward, but that gray area of compliance often clouds the issue, making juries (and the public) less sympathetic to claims of abuse. Can you be exploited if you consent? What if you only say you were abused years later, after your career has dried up?<\/p>\nSexual abuse in Hollywood has long been the subject of speculation. \u201cIt\u2019s common enough that every boy child actor would have met a pedophile in their career at some point,\u201d says Anne Henry, the mother of three child \u00adperformers and co-founder of the\u00a0BizParentz Foundation<\/a>, a group for show-business families. Henry started BizParentz more than a decade ago to help families navigate the industry, but since then she has heard of hundreds of instances in which young actors say they\u2019ve been harassed or abused.<\/p>\nEvery few years, accusations surface in court, most of which fizzle with a plea. The accusers\u2019 names are usually not public in these cases, and when actors like Corey Feldman do open up publicly, they don\u2019t typically name their abusers. Egan\u2019s case is one of the few where both the victim and the accused are publicly known, in part because victims have their own incentives for staying quiet. \u201cWhen they were on the gravy train and they were the guy\u2019s favorite, that was great for six months, two years,\u201d says Kenneth Lanning, an FBI special agent of 30 years, now retired, who has investigated every variety of sexual-abuse case. \u201cThen their careers fall apart. Now the guy\u2019s finished with you and not returning your calls. Now you\u2019re pissed.\u201d<\/p>\n
For nearly two years,<\/strong>\u00a0Egan was making more money than he knew how to spend, going out to the Palm and taking trips on private jets, and, of course, being promised auditions. Then, one day, one promise didn\u2019t pan out. \u201cX-Men\u00a0<\/i>was a job that Bryan Singer said he was going to give me,\u201d Egan says. When Egan\u2019s DEN co-worker Alex Burton got a part, the role of a mutant named Pyro, and Egan didn\u2019t, Egan says he was told it was because Burton was 18, a legal adult, and therefore able to work longer hours and with no supervision on set.<\/p>\nThen, the executives of DEN started pressuring Egan to become legally emancipated from his parents, which would allow him to work under adult work rules. His mother was offered stock in the company in exchange for permission; she declined. By then, it was 1999, and DEN was falling apart. Collins-Rector was facing his first lawsuit for alleged abuse, and DEN\u2019s lawyer was asking everyone at the estate, including Egan, to sign nondisclosure agreements in exchange for stock. He didn\u2019t sign. He still might not have walked away without the help of two other DEN employees. Alex Burton and Mark Ryan were both older than Egan and determined to call the police. Egan says they forced the issue one night at Egan\u2019s house by telling his mother what had been happening. Bonnie Mound was shattered by the news. \u201cI was still petrified,\u201d Egan says, \u201cbut I started to get stronger once we were talking through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mound found the boys a lawyer, Daniel Cherin, who along with law enforcement encouraged the boys to collect more evidence. \u201cSo we went back and copied everything in the file cabinet,\u201d Egan says. \u201cWe had photos of the drug bags and child pornography in different cabinets, and video of the gun closet they locked me in.\u201d In early 2000, Egan was still sending emails to DEN\u2019s executives, asking for money and even looking to hang out. The lawyers for Singer and the other defendants call this evidence of a shakedown; Egan says now it was part of the effort to collect evidence.<\/p>\n
Egan\u2019s great escape proved anticlimactic. The police and the FBI never charged anyone\u2014Egan and his mother still aren\u2019t sure why. \u201cMy mom heard from them once or twice, but that\u2019s it.\u2005\u201d The three boys filed a civil lawsuit in 2000 for sexual abuse against Collins-Rector, Shackley, and Pierce. They did not name Singer, Ancier, Neuman, or Goddard. Egan\u2019s lawyer, Cherin, told them he didn\u2019t have enough evidence to connect the others to the abuse\u2014at least not like he had on the three men who actually lived at the house. \u201cThe system doesn\u2019t reward the he-said-she-said scenario,\u201d Cherin tells me. He believed the high-profile targets had the resources to bury them in motions and counter-investigations. \u201cI\u2019m not a daredevil. I don\u2019t get paid to take chances.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Egan, with his mother\u2019s help, worked to litigate against the DEN executives, sitting for depositions and sifting through documents, the defendants fled the country without contesting the suit. The court awarded Egan and his fellow plaintiffs a $4.5 million default judgment, of which Egan says he collected just $25,000. The absence of consequences seemed to confirm everything Collins-Rector and the others had said: They were powerful enough to get away with it; no one would ever believe the boys; everyone who might help him would be too afraid of retribution to come forward. \u201cI was pushed by my mom to talk to the government, to law enforcement. I was scared shitless,\u201d he says. \u201cTo see that nothing happened\u2014that if you ever did come out, that law enforcement never did anything, so who could you really trust\u2014that was a hard thing for me to get over.\u201d<\/p>\n
He left Hollywood, and after a couple of years with his father in Nebraska, he moved to Las Vegas, working with his brother building theme parks. He married a woman he met there in 2005. But he couldn\u2019t seem to put enough distance between him and what had happened at M&C. \u201cI thought I could shove all these feelings down\u2014\u2018I\u2019m a big man, I can deal with this.\u2019 But it was like dealing with a madman in your brain.\u201d He was drinking hard, often alongside the only friend he\u2019d made at DEN, fellow plaintiff Mark Ryan. In 2010, Ryan had an alcohol-withdrawal-induced stroke while trying to sober up; he never fully recovered and relies on a motorized wheelchair, barely able to communicate. \u201cI have a friend who has basically lost his life,\u201d Egan says. \u201cWhenever I think I\u2019m in a bad spot, I think Mark would trade places with me in a second.\u201d<\/p>\n
Egan kept drinking for two more years until 2012, when his wife left him. \u201cI loaded my two dogs in my SUV and drove across the country while in withdrawal. I was having flashes in my eyes, I was sweating like a maniac.\u201d Egan joined AA, attending 200 meetings in the first 90 days. Then he finally found another community to envelop him the way that DEN had\u2014not just the recovery community, but the advocacy community for victims of sexual abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n
\nFrom left: Chad Shackley, Brock Pierce, Marc Collins-Rector, and Bryan Singer<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nIn the spring of 2013,<\/strong>\u00a0a year into Egan\u2019s sobriety, his mother passed along a message from BizParents. A production company was planning a documentary about sexual abuse in Hollywood, and they wanted to interview Egan. The documentary is directed by Amy Berg, whose Oscar-nominated 2006 film\u00a0Deliver Us From Evil<\/i>\u00a0examined an infamous California Catholic Church sex-abuse case. While Berg and her team won\u2019t comment on the film or even reveal its title, she did tell one reporter in April that Egan will be in it. \u201cIt\u2019s much bigger than anything about the one case,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is a huge problem. It\u2019s pervasive in Hollywood, and the time to explore it is now.\u201d Egan, who\u2019s seen it, says about a half-dozen other men like him are interviewed, none of whom he knew beforehand.<\/p>\nEgan suddenly felt like he was part of a movement. A producer with Berg\u2019s documentary referred Egan to a sexual-abuse survivors\u2019 group called the\u00a0Let Go \u2026 Let Peace Come In Foundation<\/a>, which was started by a sexual-abuse survivor named Peter Pelullo, who offered Egan more affirmation. \u201cGod knows how many children this has happened to from this situation in Hollywood,\u201d Pelullo says. The foundation referred Egan to a trauma therapist, whom he still sees. Her most important message, Egan says, was that he wasn\u2019t at fault. She explained to him how abusers groom their victims and wrangle compliance.<\/p>\nIt was his experience with the survivors\u2019 group that made Egan decide he needed to publicly accuse his abusers\u2014all of them. Last fall, he and his mother went lawyer shopping. At least one prominent sexual-abuse litigator turned Egan down: \u201cI believe every word he\u2019s saying,\u201d the lawyer told me. \u201cBut he\u2019s dead on the statute of limitations.\u201d California law allows for accusers age 26 and younger, or three years from the date they discover their trauma. Egan was 31 and had discovered his trauma as early as 2000, as his old lawsuit clearly demonstrated.<\/p>\n
Then Egan found Jeffrey Herman, an ambitious lawyer out of Boca Raton who has won tens of millions of dollars in judgments against the Miami Catholic archdiocese and who has used the money to fund long-shot cases, most recently a\u00a0failed set of claims against Kevin Clash<\/a>, the voice of\u00a0Sesame Street\u2019<\/i>s Elmo. Herman was once barred from practicing law for a year and a half for violating the Florida bar\u2019s conflict-of-interest rules when he failed to disclose an investment that competed with a client\u2019s business. But he seemed to be the sort of risk-taker Egan needed\u2014a lawyer willing to take on a bumpy case if it meant opening up a new area of litigation.<\/p>\nI visited with Herman at his office in June a week or so before I met Egan. Tan and broad-shouldered, Herman said his investigators spent five months vetting Egan\u2019s claims, turning up in the process an unpublished interview Egan gave to a reporter in 2001, in which he explicitly named Ancier, Goddard, Neuman, and Singer as his abusers. The interview helped convince Herman that Egan had a case. His staff also spoke with several men who\u2019d been at the M&C estate. Some were too afraid to be named in the initial complaint, but Egan\u2019s friend Mark Ryan, his father Fred tells me, was deposed from his wheelchair in Cincinnati and confirmed the abuse. Herman planned to get around the statute of limitations in California by filing a civil suit in Hawaii, which has a law allowing civil actions in abuse cases where the statute of limitations has expired. The trips to Hawaii, therefore, became the centerpiece of the suit.<\/p>\n
Herman told me that he had been looking for a Hollywood case even before Egan came along. \u201cI\u2019m always looking for what the next church is going to be,\u201d Herman said. \u201cWhere there\u2019s power, there\u2019s an abuse of power.\u201d As star clients go, Herman said Egan was no more problematic than any other. \u201cHe\u2019s lost in a way, because this is really horrific stuff. He\u2019s fragile. Yet he\u2019s sort of determined now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herman was bracing himself for when, inevitably, the other side would dredge up the many contradictory statements Egan had said over the years and use them against him. \u201cMike\u2019s story is very complex,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have these inconsistencies, where his mind is disassociated from some of the abuse.\u201d The most important thing Herman could do to bolster Egan\u2019s case, he said, was to turn it into a beacon to draw in others. There\u2019s strength in numbers. \u201cThe best way to get evidence is, I do a press conference,\u201d he told me. \u201cThere\u2019s always more victims.\u201d<\/p>\n
On April 17,<\/strong>\u00a0Egan and Herman made their announcement at the Four Seasons, unveiling a lawsuit naming Singer, whose\u00a0X-Men: Days of Future Past\u00a0<\/i>was about to score one of the biggest opening weekends on record. A few days later, Egan and Herman announced similar suits against Ancier, Goddard, and Neuman. \u201cWe\u2019ve alleged that there\u2019s a Hollywood sex ring, one of several sex rings,\u201d Herman said. \u201cThe door is open now. If these investigations pan out, I will be filing many more cases.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cThe allegations against me are outrageous, vicious, and completely false,\u201d Bryan Singer said in a statement a few days later, promising that \u201cthe facts will show this to be the sick, twisted shakedown it is.\u201d Stories soon surfaced of Singer\u2019s own parties, stocked, reportedly, with twinks his underlings thought he might like. Several published accounts, most quoting unnamed sources, described how Singer meets most of the younger men he dates through trusted friends who act as intermediaries\u2014or, less charitably, procurers. Yet those who defended Singer painted a picture of the director as anything but predatory, saying he is powerful but cloistered, and, like many A-listers, dependent on friends to introduce him to new men, and that he is scrupulous about the age of his partners. Still others noted how prominent gay men are also often easy targets for these kinds of allegations, which feed into ugly homophobic stereotypes about gay men and pedophilia.<\/p>\n
All four of the accused men said they\u2019d never been to Hawaii with Egan, never raped him, never mistreated him. Bryan Singer\u2019s lawyer Marty Singer pointed out that his client had never been approached or interviewed by the FBI back when Egan filed his first lawsuit, nor was he named in that lawsuit. He accused Herman of grandstanding, \u201cusing these lawsuits as an opportunity to promote himself and his law firm,\u201d and added that his \u201creputation as an attorney leaves a lot to be desired,\u201d noting the harsh wording of Herman\u2019s suspension from the Florida bar for \u201cengaging in misconduct involving fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then came the counteroffensive: leaks to the media of emails from Egan to DEN asking for money. The media got hold of a deposition by Egan from the earlier litigation in which Egan said he\u2019d never left the continental United States with anyone he was accusing of abuse. Now that the case hanged on the Hawaii trip, this statement was especially problematic. Herman, who claimed to have witnesses placing Singer in Hawaii with Egan, responded by saying he wasn\u2019t \u201csure how [Egan] interpreted the \u2018continental United States.\u2019\u2005\u201d<\/p>\n
Herman soon found another client, a British national, a few years younger than Egan, who\u00a0filed a similar complaint against Singer and Goddard<\/a>. In response, Singer\u2019s lawyer accused Herman of fabricating the substance of the new claim, and threatened to seek sanctions against him \u201cfor his reckless, unethical behavior.\u201d<\/p>\nIn late June, Egan went to a Goo Goo Dolls concert at the Red Rock Hotel and Casino, where, he says, a stranger cornered him in the restroom, blocking the exit for more than a minute. \u201cHe told me, \u2018You need to go away! You need to go away! This is going to get intense!\u2019\u2005\u201d Then he served Egan with a civil suit filed by Garth Ancier, who was suing Egan, Herman, and his Hawaii co-counsel Mark Gallagher for malicious prosecution. The next day, Egan filed a police report for harassment.<\/p>\n
Still, between the attention and the coming documentary, Egan felt unburdened for the first time in years: \u201cI already think whatever happens with the case, whatever legal strategies we have to do, I feel already we\u2019ve won.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just days later,<\/strong>\u00a0Egan called me in a panic. His lawyer wanted him to settle with Singer, and Egan was appalled. \u201cI would look like a complete liar if I came out and said the things he wants me to say!\u201d<\/p>\nThe details trickled out in the weeks that followed. Five more alleged victims of Singer\u2019s had come forward to Herman, and at least some of them had accusations within the statute of limitations. Under the proposed settlement, those five accusers would split the lion\u2019s share of the settlement, which one source close to the case says amounted to $20 million. Egan would get a mere $100,000.<\/p>\n
The money bothered him, but the confidentiality demands of the settlement bothered him more. For Egan, being silenced by his own lawyer felt like a new betrayal. \u201cI look at what Jeff did to me as no better than the pedophiles,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Egan refused to sign, and soon after, Herman dropped him as a client, applying to withdraw as counsel in all four of Egan\u2019s lawsuits. Herman hired his own attorney to represent him in Ancier\u2019s malicious prosecution lawsuit; he declined to comment any further for this story, and he has yet to send Egan the bulk of his case file. In late August, adrift without a lawyer or most of the documents from his own case, Egan\u00a0temporarily pulled the plug on his lawsuits<\/a>. The court dismissed his claim against Singer without prejudice, which would allow him to refile should he find a new lawyer. \u201cHerman\u2019s created such a mess for me that nobody wants to touch it,\u201d Egan said during another anguished phone call. \u201cIn all honesty, based on what Herman\u2019s done, I\u2019m looking to sue Herman. I just think to myself,\u00a0How does he put his head on the pillow at night knowing what he did to me?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\nEgan has run into difficulties in bringing his case to the court of public opinion as well. The Amy Berg documentary, which he hoped would bolster his claims, has been slow to find distribution. While this fall\u2019s DOC NYC festival has accepted the film, discussions with Mark Cuban\u2019s Magnolia Pictures went nowhere. One source who\u2019s seen the film says it\u2019s emotionally powerful, with several shocking moments, but that the subject is too ripped-from-the-headlines for theaters, and perhaps better for TV or Netflix. Donna Daniels, a spokesperson for Amy Berg, says the filmmakers have \u201cmade the decision to self-distribute.\u201d<\/p>\n
What hurt Egan the most, perhaps, was that he\u2019d ever thought this could have turned out any other way. He\u2019d been warned by everyone, starting with three of his old DEN co-workers, whom Herman\u2019s investigators had approached. \u201cThey told me, \u2018Mike, we don\u2019t want to get involved. You\u2019ll never beat these people, they have too much power.\u2019 I\u2019ve tried to help the cause and all that. But I think,\u00a0Man, I should have listened to them.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJune 23 will be two years of me not having a drink,\u201d he tells me as we walk to his car. He is tan but rail-thin, and a certain jittery frailty comes through as he talks. His manner is like that of a lot of people in the early years of recovery\u2014overcome by the relief they feel in talking at length about what they\u2019ve been through. Quite often, Egan says, he still feels seized by emotions he can\u2019t manage. \u201cThese people put so much fear in you when you\u2019re a kid. But I still have fear. I had a dream last night that I was walking into a deposition and got shot.\u201d He smiles and shakes his head. \u201cThat\u2019s sick to think that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I spoke with Egan, both in person in Las Vegas and later over a steady stream of phone calls and emails and texts, his anguish became clear, even if the facts surrounding it remained stubbornly out of reach. Everything he says happened to him has been roundly denied, and every allegation lacks documentation. He was almost certainly taken advantage of (though by whom and to what extent has yet to be proved). It\u2019s also true that he had his own motives for insinuating himself into the world of the M&C estate. Soon after he moved to L.A., he endured his first unsuccessful TV-pilot season. On the audition circuit, he ran into the same teenage boys, all as beautiful as he was, at every casting. What he needed were connections. The month he first visited the estate, DEN had premiered its debut program,\u00a0Chad\u2019s World.<\/i>\u00a0Practically no one watched the show,\u00a0<\/i>but the company payroll was staggering: $12 million in salaries with only one series in production.<\/p>\n
After a few visits, DEN\u2019s executives offered Egan $600 a week to do odd jobs around the estate. He said yes, and soon found himself embraced by the DEN family. He was given a starring role in a new DEN show called\u00a0The Royal Standard,\u00a0<\/i>directed by Randall Kleiser, who had directed\u00a0Grease\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0The Blue Lagoon<\/i>; he was paid $1,000 more a week. He hung out at\u00a0Independence Day\u00a0<\/i>producer Dean Devlin\u2019s house and did screen tests for Roland Emmerich\u2019s movie\u00a0The Patriot<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Freaks and Geeks.<\/i>\u00a0Along with the other teenagers he met through DEN, he was a regular at a place called Barfly, where he\u2019d get so drunk he\u2019d throw up. The estate, meanwhile, became famous for its parties, which were stocked with attractive young men. \u201cI\u2019ve spent some time at the Playboy mansion,\u201d one person connected to DEN said later to the New York\u00a0Post.<\/i>\u00a0\u201cThis place makes it look like a trailer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The grooming, according to the lawsuit, started almost on day one. Egan remembers being pulled aside by Collins-Rector, Pierce, and Shackley for hourlong one-on-one lectures about how they had gaydar and they knew that Egan really was gay (he says he is not). He remembers the ban on the wearing of clothes in the pool or hot-tub areas. And he remembers being locked inside a gun closet for resisting Collins-Rector\u2019s advances. He also remembers the drugs\u2014Valium, Vicodin, Xanax, Percocet, ecstasy, roofies. In the years to come, several other young men would come forward to talk about inappropriate behavior by the executives of DEN. There was a boy named Daniel who, according to a\u00a02007 account of DEN\u2019s rise and fall in\u00a0<\/a>Radar<\/a>,<\/i>\u00a0wrote a suicide note that his brother intercepted before he could act on it: \u201cI can\u2019t go on. I let them use me as a sex tool. I let those assholes do all those terrible things to me. Good-bye.\u201d There are several boys, including Egan, who would recall Collins-\u00adRector aiming a gun at them and threatening to pull the trigger. And there was the boy who, in 2000, filed a lawsuit in New Jersey claiming Collins-\u00adRector repeatedly sexually abused him from 1993 to 1996. Collins-Rector denied those allegations but then settled the suit shortly before leaving the company.<\/p>\n What made Egan\u2019s accusations news this spring was that he didn\u2019t just name DEN\u2019s executives; he named prominent members of the gay Hollywood elite, including Singer. Egan\u2019s lawsuit describes an incident in the estate\u2019s pool when Egan was 17 years old. Collins-Rector allegedly passed Egan to Singer in the hot tub, where Egan \u201cwas made to sit on\u201d Singer\u2019s lap; Singer gave him a drink, mentioned finding him a movie role, told him he was sexy, and masturbated and fellated him. When Egan resisted, the complaint reads, Singer forced Egan\u2019s \u201chead underwater to make [Egan] perform oral sex upon him. When [Egan] pulled his head out of the water in order to breathe, [Singer] demanded that he continue, which [Egan] refused. [Singer] then forced [Egan] to continue performing oral sex upon him outside of the pool, and subsequently forcibly sodomized\u201d him.<\/p>\n Egan says Singer\u2019s behavior continued on trips the whole group took together to the Paul Mitchell estate in Hawaii. One night, the complaint alleges, Egan came across Singer in the pool area, whereupon Singer \u201cput a handful of cocaine\u201d under Egan\u2019s nose, then \u201cforced him to inhale it.\u201d Singer entered the pool, where he \u201cnonconsensually masturbated\u201d Egan; pushed his head underwater and made him \u201corally copulate him\u201d; and eventually brought Egan to his room, where \u201che again anally raped\u201d him.<\/p>\n Singer\u2019s official response to the accusations is that they\u2019re fiction. \u201cBryan never acted inappropriately toward Mr. Egan,\u201d says Singer\u2019s lawyer, Marty Singer (no relation). \u201cAll of his claims are lies.\u201d The lawyer\u2019s statements have consistently addressed just the specific claims in the lawsuit, neither confirming nor denying that Singer and Egan had sex or knew each other; he did not return messages for this story.<\/p>\n On the many nights Egan remembers sleeping over at the M&C estate, he says his mother would call to make sure it was all right, and an adult would come to the phone and assure her all was well. And, in one respect, it was. Suddenly, things were happening for him career-wise. To walk away from M&C would mean telling himself he wasn\u2019t cut out for Hollywood. When I ask Egan\u2019s mother about that now, she bursts into tears. \u201cWe were raised in the Midwest, and we try to find the good in people,\u201d Mound says. \u201cAnd we went to New York and never had any problems, and he just seemed to be a success. He was just so happy and having so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n Over lunch, Egan comes back again and again to the notion of grooming\u2014that a 16-year-old boy could be made to go along with almost anything, given the right motivation. \u201cI was never a willing participant in what they did to me,\u201d Egan says. \u201cThey ripped in and stole my soul. I became a robot. I had such fear instilled in me I was a nonfunctioning person. I may have become more of a compliant victim, but I was never willing.\u201d<\/p>\n Egan didn\u2019t choose<\/strong>\u00a0the word\u00a0compliant<\/i>\u00a0arbitrarily. The word is commonly used in abuse cases with teenage victims who, unlike toddlers or tweens, may have some degree of agency when interacting sexually with adults. These cases tend to follow a pattern: The abusers engage in a seduction process that normalizes the behavior until the victims go along with it\u2014still victims, but also compliant participants. Legally, if the victim is under the age of consent, proving sexual abuse should be relatively straightforward, but that gray area of compliance often clouds the issue, making juries (and the public) less sympathetic to claims of abuse. Can you be exploited if you consent? What if you only say you were abused years later, after your career has dried up?<\/p>\n Sexual abuse in Hollywood has long been the subject of speculation. \u201cIt\u2019s common enough that every boy child actor would have met a pedophile in their career at some point,\u201d says Anne Henry, the mother of three child \u00adperformers and co-founder of the\u00a0BizParentz Foundation<\/a>, a group for show-business families. Henry started BizParentz more than a decade ago to help families navigate the industry, but since then she has heard of hundreds of instances in which young actors say they\u2019ve been harassed or abused.<\/p>\n Every few years, accusations surface in court, most of which fizzle with a plea. The accusers\u2019 names are usually not public in these cases, and when actors like Corey Feldman do open up publicly, they don\u2019t typically name their abusers. Egan\u2019s case is one of the few where both the victim and the accused are publicly known, in part because victims have their own incentives for staying quiet. \u201cWhen they were on the gravy train and they were the guy\u2019s favorite, that was great for six months, two years,\u201d says Kenneth Lanning, an FBI special agent of 30 years, now retired, who has investigated every variety of sexual-abuse case. \u201cThen their careers fall apart. Now the guy\u2019s finished with you and not returning your calls. Now you\u2019re pissed.\u201d<\/p>\n For nearly two years,<\/strong>\u00a0Egan was making more money than he knew how to spend, going out to the Palm and taking trips on private jets, and, of course, being promised auditions. Then, one day, one promise didn\u2019t pan out. \u201cX-Men\u00a0<\/i>was a job that Bryan Singer said he was going to give me,\u201d Egan says. When Egan\u2019s DEN co-worker Alex Burton got a part, the role of a mutant named Pyro, and Egan didn\u2019t, Egan says he was told it was because Burton was 18, a legal adult, and therefore able to work longer hours and with no supervision on set.<\/p>\n Then, the executives of DEN started pressuring Egan to become legally emancipated from his parents, which would allow him to work under adult work rules. His mother was offered stock in the company in exchange for permission; she declined. By then, it was 1999, and DEN was falling apart. Collins-Rector was facing his first lawsuit for alleged abuse, and DEN\u2019s lawyer was asking everyone at the estate, including Egan, to sign nondisclosure agreements in exchange for stock. He didn\u2019t sign. He still might not have walked away without the help of two other DEN employees. Alex Burton and Mark Ryan were both older than Egan and determined to call the police. Egan says they forced the issue one night at Egan\u2019s house by telling his mother what had been happening. Bonnie Mound was shattered by the news. \u201cI was still petrified,\u201d Egan says, \u201cbut I started to get stronger once we were talking through it.\u201d<\/p>\n Mound found the boys a lawyer, Daniel Cherin, who along with law enforcement encouraged the boys to collect more evidence. \u201cSo we went back and copied everything in the file cabinet,\u201d Egan says. \u201cWe had photos of the drug bags and child pornography in different cabinets, and video of the gun closet they locked me in.\u201d In early 2000, Egan was still sending emails to DEN\u2019s executives, asking for money and even looking to hang out. The lawyers for Singer and the other defendants call this evidence of a shakedown; Egan says now it was part of the effort to collect evidence.<\/p>\n Egan\u2019s great escape proved anticlimactic. The police and the FBI never charged anyone\u2014Egan and his mother still aren\u2019t sure why. \u201cMy mom heard from them once or twice, but that\u2019s it.\u2005\u201d The three boys filed a civil lawsuit in 2000 for sexual abuse against Collins-Rector, Shackley, and Pierce. They did not name Singer, Ancier, Neuman, or Goddard. Egan\u2019s lawyer, Cherin, told them he didn\u2019t have enough evidence to connect the others to the abuse\u2014at least not like he had on the three men who actually lived at the house. \u201cThe system doesn\u2019t reward the he-said-she-said scenario,\u201d Cherin tells me. He believed the high-profile targets had the resources to bury them in motions and counter-investigations. \u201cI\u2019m not a daredevil. I don\u2019t get paid to take chances.\u201d<\/p>\n While Egan, with his mother\u2019s help, worked to litigate against the DEN executives, sitting for depositions and sifting through documents, the defendants fled the country without contesting the suit. The court awarded Egan and his fellow plaintiffs a $4.5 million default judgment, of which Egan says he collected just $25,000. The absence of consequences seemed to confirm everything Collins-Rector and the others had said: They were powerful enough to get away with it; no one would ever believe the boys; everyone who might help him would be too afraid of retribution to come forward. \u201cI was pushed by my mom to talk to the government, to law enforcement. I was scared shitless,\u201d he says. \u201cTo see that nothing happened\u2014that if you ever did come out, that law enforcement never did anything, so who could you really trust\u2014that was a hard thing for me to get over.\u201d<\/p>\n He left Hollywood, and after a couple of years with his father in Nebraska, he moved to Las Vegas, working with his brother building theme parks. He married a woman he met there in 2005. But he couldn\u2019t seem to put enough distance between him and what had happened at M&C. \u201cI thought I could shove all these feelings down\u2014\u2018I\u2019m a big man, I can deal with this.\u2019 But it was like dealing with a madman in your brain.\u201d He was drinking hard, often alongside the only friend he\u2019d made at DEN, fellow plaintiff Mark Ryan. In 2010, Ryan had an alcohol-withdrawal-induced stroke while trying to sober up; he never fully recovered and relies on a motorized wheelchair, barely able to communicate. \u201cI have a friend who has basically lost his life,\u201d Egan says. \u201cWhenever I think I\u2019m in a bad spot, I think Mark would trade places with me in a second.\u201d<\/p>\n Egan kept drinking for two more years until 2012, when his wife left him. \u201cI loaded my two dogs in my SUV and drove across the country while in withdrawal. I was having flashes in my eyes, I was sweating like a maniac.\u201d Egan joined AA, attending 200 meetings in the first 90 days. Then he finally found another community to envelop him the way that DEN had\u2014not just the recovery community, but the advocacy community for victims of sexual abuse.<\/p>\n In the spring of 2013,<\/strong>\u00a0a year into Egan\u2019s sobriety, his mother passed along a message from BizParents. A production company was planning a documentary about sexual abuse in Hollywood, and they wanted to interview Egan. The documentary is directed by Amy Berg, whose Oscar-nominated 2006 film\u00a0Deliver Us From Evil<\/i>\u00a0examined an infamous California Catholic Church sex-abuse case. While Berg and her team won\u2019t comment on the film or even reveal its title, she did tell one reporter in April that Egan will be in it. \u201cIt\u2019s much bigger than anything about the one case,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is a huge problem. It\u2019s pervasive in Hollywood, and the time to explore it is now.\u201d Egan, who\u2019s seen it, says about a half-dozen other men like him are interviewed, none of whom he knew beforehand.<\/p>\n Egan suddenly felt like he was part of a movement. A producer with Berg\u2019s documentary referred Egan to a sexual-abuse survivors\u2019 group called the\u00a0Let Go \u2026 Let Peace Come In Foundation<\/a>, which was started by a sexual-abuse survivor named Peter Pelullo, who offered Egan more affirmation. \u201cGod knows how many children this has happened to from this situation in Hollywood,\u201d Pelullo says. The foundation referred Egan to a trauma therapist, whom he still sees. Her most important message, Egan says, was that he wasn\u2019t at fault. She explained to him how abusers groom their victims and wrangle compliance.<\/p>\n It was his experience with the survivors\u2019 group that made Egan decide he needed to publicly accuse his abusers\u2014all of them. Last fall, he and his mother went lawyer shopping. At least one prominent sexual-abuse litigator turned Egan down: \u201cI believe every word he\u2019s saying,\u201d the lawyer told me. \u201cBut he\u2019s dead on the statute of limitations.\u201d California law allows for accusers age 26 and younger, or three years from the date they discover their trauma. Egan was 31 and had discovered his trauma as early as 2000, as his old lawsuit clearly demonstrated.<\/p>\n Then Egan found Jeffrey Herman, an ambitious lawyer out of Boca Raton who has won tens of millions of dollars in judgments against the Miami Catholic archdiocese and who has used the money to fund long-shot cases, most recently a\u00a0failed set of claims against Kevin Clash<\/a>, the voice of\u00a0Sesame Street\u2019<\/i>s Elmo. Herman was once barred from practicing law for a year and a half for violating the Florida bar\u2019s conflict-of-interest rules when he failed to disclose an investment that competed with a client\u2019s business. But he seemed to be the sort of risk-taker Egan needed\u2014a lawyer willing to take on a bumpy case if it meant opening up a new area of litigation.<\/p>\n I visited with Herman at his office in June a week or so before I met Egan. Tan and broad-shouldered, Herman said his investigators spent five months vetting Egan\u2019s claims, turning up in the process an unpublished interview Egan gave to a reporter in 2001, in which he explicitly named Ancier, Goddard, Neuman, and Singer as his abusers. The interview helped convince Herman that Egan had a case. His staff also spoke with several men who\u2019d been at the M&C estate. Some were too afraid to be named in the initial complaint, but Egan\u2019s friend Mark Ryan, his father Fred tells me, was deposed from his wheelchair in Cincinnati and confirmed the abuse. Herman planned to get around the statute of limitations in California by filing a civil suit in Hawaii, which has a law allowing civil actions in abuse cases where the statute of limitations has expired. The trips to Hawaii, therefore, became the centerpiece of the suit.<\/p>\n Herman told me that he had been looking for a Hollywood case even before Egan came along. \u201cI\u2019m always looking for what the next church is going to be,\u201d Herman said. \u201cWhere there\u2019s power, there\u2019s an abuse of power.\u201d As star clients go, Herman said Egan was no more problematic than any other. \u201cHe\u2019s lost in a way, because this is really horrific stuff. He\u2019s fragile. Yet he\u2019s sort of determined now.\u201d<\/p>\n Herman was bracing himself for when, inevitably, the other side would dredge up the many contradictory statements Egan had said over the years and use them against him. \u201cMike\u2019s story is very complex,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have these inconsistencies, where his mind is disassociated from some of the abuse.\u201d The most important thing Herman could do to bolster Egan\u2019s case, he said, was to turn it into a beacon to draw in others. There\u2019s strength in numbers. \u201cThe best way to get evidence is, I do a press conference,\u201d he told me. \u201cThere\u2019s always more victims.\u201d<\/p>\n On April 17,<\/strong>\u00a0Egan and Herman made their announcement at the Four Seasons, unveiling a lawsuit naming Singer, whose\u00a0X-Men: Days of Future Past\u00a0<\/i>was about to score one of the biggest opening weekends on record. A few days later, Egan and Herman announced similar suits against Ancier, Goddard, and Neuman. \u201cWe\u2019ve alleged that there\u2019s a Hollywood sex ring, one of several sex rings,\u201d Herman said. \u201cThe door is open now. If these investigations pan out, I will be filing many more cases.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe allegations against me are outrageous, vicious, and completely false,\u201d Bryan Singer said in a statement a few days later, promising that \u201cthe facts will show this to be the sick, twisted shakedown it is.\u201d Stories soon surfaced of Singer\u2019s own parties, stocked, reportedly, with twinks his underlings thought he might like. Several published accounts, most quoting unnamed sources, described how Singer meets most of the younger men he dates through trusted friends who act as intermediaries\u2014or, less charitably, procurers. Yet those who defended Singer painted a picture of the director as anything but predatory, saying he is powerful but cloistered, and, like many A-listers, dependent on friends to introduce him to new men, and that he is scrupulous about the age of his partners. Still others noted how prominent gay men are also often easy targets for these kinds of allegations, which feed into ugly homophobic stereotypes about gay men and pedophilia.<\/p>\n All four of the accused men said they\u2019d never been to Hawaii with Egan, never raped him, never mistreated him. Bryan Singer\u2019s lawyer Marty Singer pointed out that his client had never been approached or interviewed by the FBI back when Egan filed his first lawsuit, nor was he named in that lawsuit. He accused Herman of grandstanding, \u201cusing these lawsuits as an opportunity to promote himself and his law firm,\u201d and added that his \u201creputation as an attorney leaves a lot to be desired,\u201d noting the harsh wording of Herman\u2019s suspension from the Florida bar for \u201cengaging in misconduct involving fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation.\u201d<\/p>\n Then came the counteroffensive: leaks to the media of emails from Egan to DEN asking for money. The media got hold of a deposition by Egan from the earlier litigation in which Egan said he\u2019d never left the continental United States with anyone he was accusing of abuse. Now that the case hanged on the Hawaii trip, this statement was especially problematic. Herman, who claimed to have witnesses placing Singer in Hawaii with Egan, responded by saying he wasn\u2019t \u201csure how [Egan] interpreted the \u2018continental United States.\u2019\u2005\u201d<\/p>\n Herman soon found another client, a British national, a few years younger than Egan, who\u00a0filed a similar complaint against Singer and Goddard<\/a>. In response, Singer\u2019s lawyer accused Herman of fabricating the substance of the new claim, and threatened to seek sanctions against him \u201cfor his reckless, unethical behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n In late June, Egan went to a Goo Goo Dolls concert at the Red Rock Hotel and Casino, where, he says, a stranger cornered him in the restroom, blocking the exit for more than a minute. \u201cHe told me, \u2018You need to go away! You need to go away! This is going to get intense!\u2019\u2005\u201d Then he served Egan with a civil suit filed by Garth Ancier, who was suing Egan, Herman, and his Hawaii co-counsel Mark Gallagher for malicious prosecution. The next day, Egan filed a police report for harassment.<\/p>\n Still, between the attention and the coming documentary, Egan felt unburdened for the first time in years: \u201cI already think whatever happens with the case, whatever legal strategies we have to do, I feel already we\u2019ve won.\u201d<\/p>\n Just days later,<\/strong>\u00a0Egan called me in a panic. His lawyer wanted him to settle with Singer, and Egan was appalled. \u201cI would look like a complete liar if I came out and said the things he wants me to say!\u201d<\/p>\n The details trickled out in the weeks that followed. Five more alleged victims of Singer\u2019s had come forward to Herman, and at least some of them had accusations within the statute of limitations. Under the proposed settlement, those five accusers would split the lion\u2019s share of the settlement, which one source close to the case says amounted to $20 million. Egan would get a mere $100,000.<\/p>\n The money bothered him, but the confidentiality demands of the settlement bothered him more. For Egan, being silenced by his own lawyer felt like a new betrayal. \u201cI look at what Jeff did to me as no better than the pedophiles,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Egan refused to sign, and soon after, Herman dropped him as a client, applying to withdraw as counsel in all four of Egan\u2019s lawsuits. Herman hired his own attorney to represent him in Ancier\u2019s malicious prosecution lawsuit; he declined to comment any further for this story, and he has yet to send Egan the bulk of his case file. In late August, adrift without a lawyer or most of the documents from his own case, Egan\u00a0temporarily pulled the plug on his lawsuits<\/a>. The court dismissed his claim against Singer without prejudice, which would allow him to refile should he find a new lawyer. \u201cHerman\u2019s created such a mess for me that nobody wants to touch it,\u201d Egan said during another anguished phone call. \u201cIn all honesty, based on what Herman\u2019s done, I\u2019m looking to sue Herman. I just think to myself,\u00a0How does he put his head on the pillow at night knowing what he did to me?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n Egan has run into difficulties in bringing his case to the court of public opinion as well. The Amy Berg documentary, which he hoped would bolster his claims, has been slow to find distribution. While this fall\u2019s DOC NYC festival has accepted the film, discussions with Mark Cuban\u2019s Magnolia Pictures went nowhere. One source who\u2019s seen the film says it\u2019s emotionally powerful, with several shocking moments, but that the subject is too ripped-from-the-headlines for theaters, and perhaps better for TV or Netflix. Donna Daniels, a spokesperson for Amy Berg, says the filmmakers have \u201cmade the decision to self-distribute.\u201d<\/p>\n What hurt Egan the most, perhaps, was that he\u2019d ever thought this could have turned out any other way. He\u2019d been warned by everyone, starting with three of his old DEN co-workers, whom Herman\u2019s investigators had approached. \u201cThey told me, \u2018Mike, we don\u2019t want to get involved. You\u2019ll never beat these people, they have too much power.\u2019 I\u2019ve tried to help the cause and all that. But I think,\u00a0Man, I should have listened to them.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
\nFrom left: Chad Shackley, Brock Pierce, Marc Collins-Rector, and Bryan Singer<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n