Bryan Singer has been facing high-profile accusations of sexual assault against teenagers since at least 2017 when he was sued by a man who claimed Singer had assaulted him when he was just 17-years-old. Then in 2019 the Atlantic published a lengthy story including numerous allegations about sexual assaults by Singer on boys as young as thirteen.

Today, a former assistant/boyfriend who spent several years with Singer tells his story in his own words. Blake Stuerman says the relationship began when he was 18 and Singer was 43. There’s a photo included in the story in which Stuerman looks like he could be fifteen. After meeting on a set, he quickly got invited to fancy dinners with Singer and his friends. Soon he was always asked to sit next to Singer who one night pushed him to have an alcoholic drink. Later the party moved back to Singer’s hotel room and eventually everyone else left.

I was newly 18, alone in a hotel suite with a rich and famous man who was giving me his full attention, and I was intoxicated for the first time in my life. My chest grows tight now just thinking about it. You can imagine what happened next. I didn’t know I was allowed to say no. I didn’t know that alcohol was affecting my decision-making ability.

The next day, he asked whether I’d like to see Los Angeles. I had never been there, and he was offering to fly me with him on his plane. He told me I should work in film, that it’s what I’m “meant to do.” I felt he understood me; I always knew I was meant to tell stories. Bryan told me if I was serious about my future, I needed to move to Los Angeles.

This part of the story reminds me of Harvey Weinstein, i.e. promising rolls to young actresses who agreed to have sex with him. Stuerman moved to LA at his own expense and their relationship continued:

He invited me to sets, post-production sessions, script readings, development meetings, film festivals, parties and dinners. He would pay for meals and was extremely generous — he even took me to dinner with Sir Elton John. He also began to expect sex more frequently.

He would invite me over to watch movies until late each night. He called it “Bryan Singer’s Film School.” It was usually just the two of us but sometimes others would join and then leave the moment the movie ended. It was then expected that we’d have sex or, at the very least, I would masturbate with him.

Singer at this point was paying Stuerman’s expenses and gave him a credit card. But the relationship became more controlling as Singer struggled with alcoholism.

Bryan would keep the actors and crew waiting while he worked to sober up in the mornings. We would come up with excuses to buy more time. As calls would come in telling us they were ready for him to come to set, he would lash out at me. One morning, I just couldn’t take much more of what he was saying to me. My body couldn’t take much more. I told him he was an alcoholic and needed help. He flew into a rage and screamed back, “I know I’m a fucking alcoholic! You just fucked up, man. You just fucked up so bad. GET THE FUCK OUT!”

One day, Stuerman overslept on a day they were supposed to meet for brunch. Someone showed up at his apartment and told him he had two hours to leave and he would have to pay his own way back to LA. His credit card was frozen. When he got back to LA he signed a “separation agreement” which included a payout he describes as low five figures.

Stuerman doesn’t deny being a willing participant in all of this. His argument is that it took him years in therapy to understand the degree to which he’d been controlled and taken advantage of by someone much older with all of the power in the relationship. So this particular story doesn’t involve any behavior that would be illegal but it does paint Singer as a very troubled person with and appetite for young-looking boys over whom he has control. Singer has claimed before that the criticism of his behavior is homophobic but in this case if a 43-year-old straight director was doing the same with an 18-year-old woman I think most people would see the problem, even if it’s not technically illegal.

And of course that doesn’t account for the alleged sexual assaults mentioned above which really would have been illegal. Stuerman doesn’t say anything specific about those allegation even though it seems he would have been in a position to know something about Singer’s behavior with other people.