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Famed countertenor David Daniels and his husband, Scott Walters, are charged with drugging and assaulting a man in 2010.
Opera star David Daniels and his husband, conductor and singer Scott Walters, have been arrested on charges of drugging and raping a man in Houston in 2010.
The men were arrested last Wednesday in Ann Arbor, Mich., where Daniels is a professor at the University of Michigan, and in an Ann Arbor court Friday they said they will not contest extradition to Houston to face the charges, reports MLive, a website for several Michigan newspapers.
"Mr. Daniels and Mr. Walters have waived their rights to contest extradition and look forward to defending the charges in Houston, in a courtroom where facts matter," said their attorney, Matt Hennessy, according to MLive. They will be taken to Houston within the next two weeks.
Baritone singer Samuel Schultz came forward last August with accusations that Daniels and Walters drugged and raped him in a Houston apartment after a closing-night party following Daniels's run in Xerxes at the Houston Grand Opera in 2010. Schultz said he woke up at the apartment the next day naked and in pain. "I was sore and I didn't know why," he told the New York Daily News last year. "I made my way to the bathroom to figure out why I hurt. I was bleeding from my rectum."
Schultz said he did not report the incident at the time because he feared it would hurt his career. But he decided come forward last year because of the MeToo movement and because he heard Daniels had been granted tenure at the University of Michigan, therefore placing him in close contact with students in an unequal power dynamic.
After Schultz made the accusations, the Houston Police Department began an investigation, which resulted in the arrest of Daniels, 52, and Walters, 36. Both maintain their innocence, and Hennessy says their interaction with Schultz was "consensual sex."
Daniels, one of the most famous countertenors in the world, is on paid leave from the University of Michigan. He and Walters are a prominent couple in the opera world and were married by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2014.
Daniels has been the subject of other accusations of sexual misconduct. Last October, a former student, Andrew Lipian, sued the university, saying that when he went to Daniels's home to watch RuPaul's Drag Race in March 2017, Daniels drugged him and sexually assaulted him, MLive reports. In December, Daniels filed a counterclaim, calling the accusations "fake and malicious."
Another student has anonymously accused Daniels of contacting him on Grindr and offering to pay him for sex, knowing he was a student. The University of Michigan Office of Institutional Equity investigated his claim and closed the case last year, but it's unclear what conclusions investigators reached or if any action was taken against Daniels, according to MLive. University officials said they do not discuss specific cases.
Daniels and Walters face prison sentences of up to 20 years each if convicted of sexually assaulting Schultz.
