« He came back to where I was in the locker room throughout the day to molest me. »
Today the Atlantic published a lengthy story about allegations of sexual misconduct involving director Bryan Singer. Singer is best known for his breakout film The Usual Suspects and for directing several of the X-Men movies. His most recent project was Bohemian Rhapsody, but he was fired before he had finished shooting it.
The Atlantic story isn’t just a rehash of prior allegations which have circulated for years. The authors interviewed 50 people for the piece including four men who had never told their stories publicly before. Not all of the stories involve non-consensual sex, but several of them involve teens who were years below the California age of consent at the time, i.e. 13 and 15-year-old boys. For instance, Singer met Victor Valdovinos when the production of his second film, Apt Pupil, took over a Middle School near Los Angeles.
Late one afternoon, after basketball practice, Valdovinos stopped in an empty restroom. While standing at a urinal, he says, he felt a presence behind him. He turned and saw a bespectacled man in his early 30s. It was Bryan Singer. He looked Valdovinos over; Valdovinos remembers him saying, “You’re so good-looking. What are you doing tomorrow? Maybe I could have somebody contact you about putting you in this movie.”…
After being dropped off by his father one morning, he was directed to the locker room. Shooting was about to begin. He remembers that the locker room had been divided—a screen here and lights over there. A crew member gave him a towel and told him to disrobe completely and wrap the towel around his waist. He was 13 years old. He hadn’t yet had his first kiss.
“I’m hanging out,” Valdovinos says. “All of a sudden, Bryan comes in. He goes, ‘Hey! How are you?’ Real cheerful. And I’m like, ‘Hi.’ I can’t remember his exact words, but he was kind of just saying ‘Come back here.’ He kind of directs me; he kind of grabs me; and he takes us to the back area, which was kind of closed off. Like, this is the whole locker room”—Valdovinos gestures to suggest the space—“they’re doing their stuff over there, and I was back here, in the towel, with no shirt and no clothes on, sitting on one of the locker-room benches. Bryan’s like, ‘Just hang out here. It’s going to be all day. Don’t worry.” Singer left, and Valdovinos waited for what seemed like hours.
Eventually, he says, Singer came back and made small talk. How are you doing? Do you need anything? “Every time he had a chance—three times—he would go back there… He was always touching my chest.
