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Steven Seagal Has Strange Sexual Quirk, Ex-Assistant’s Lawsuit Alleges
Seagal’s Alleged Unique Reaction Used to I.D. Other Alleged Victims, Plaintiff’s Lawyer Says
By COURTNEY HUTCHISON
ABC News Medical Unit
April 16, 2010
Steven Seagal has a “unique physiological reaction to sexual arousal,” according to a sexual harassment complaint filed by his ex-assistant, Kayden Nguyen, but until the case against the star goes to court, everyone involved is keeping mum as to what might be.
Nguyen’s formal sexual harassment complaint, filed Monday, spends two paragraphs discussing the existence of said “reaction” and the ability of others who have seen Seagal aroused to verify it. For now, however, Nguyen and her attorney, William Waldo, say they have no intention of sharing specifics.
“I understand why you’re asking about it,” Waldo said, “but I can’t go into specifics. There is something he does – he knows what it is and she does and everyone else who has had a similar experience with Mr. Seagal knows.”
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Seagal’s manager, David Unger, has also declined to comment on the issue. Seagal’s attorney, Marty Singer, did not respond to inquiries about Seagal’s “reaction” but in a written statement he said that the lawsuit “is a ridiculous and absurd claim by a disgruntled ex-employee who was fired for using illegal narcotics.”
Why all the secrecy? Waldo says it goes beyond protecting the actor’s privacy, which he admits is one factor. But he said that this alleged secret reaction has become a way to identify other alleged sexual harassment victims of Seagal’s.
“There are a lot of real victims of Mr. Seagal who are now coming forward,” Waldo said, “and as you can imagine, there are also people who aren’t real victims” but who want to claim that they were “for the attention.”
Because of the unique and exceptional nature of Seagal’s sexual “reaction,” Waldo said, intimate knowledge of this trait has helped him separate the wheat from the chaff among those claiming to have been assaulted, Waldo said.
If “someone comes forward and says ‘I know what that physiological thing is’, and they really do, that helps their credibility.” If they don’t mention it, he said, they most likely have not had sexual interactions, consensual or otherwise, with the star.
“These aren’t casual allegations,” Waldo adds in response to Singer’s allegations that Nguyen’s claims are fabricated, “they’re serious and verified under penalty of perjury, because they’re true.”
In response to Singer’s statement, Waldo also said that Nguyen “was not ‘fired’, she escaped” and that “the allegation about ‘using illegal narcotics’ is false.”
Strange Sex
Kinky sex, fetishes, sex addictions and the like not unheard of in Hollywood, but Nguyen’s statement seems to be referring to something a bit more biological – a physiological quirk so distinctive that she claims it idiosyncratically identifies the actor.
While the details will remain hush-hush for the moment, the allegation raises questions: most notably, have bizarre physiological reactions to sexual arousal been noted in others?
ABC News had sexual health experts weigh in on the strange things that sometimes happen when people get turned on.
When a man or a woman becomes sexually aroused, a series of events take place that ready the body for sex.
“The process starts with a reaction to some sexual stimulus … experienced as a state of excitement and awareness of [the manifestations of] arousal, such as an increased heart rate,” said Dr. John Bancroft, former director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex, Gender and Reproduction.
The eyes dilate, blood flow to the genitalia increases, breathing accelerates, and blood pressure kicks it up a notch.
Why would an unexpected bodily reaction take place alongside this normal physiological chain?
“The brain works as a whole, but is also compartmentalized; it’s possible to have a wire crossed,” said Dr. Gil Wilshire, a reproductive endocrinologist at Mid-Missouri Reproductive Medicine and Surgery.
“This is how we get things like synesthesia, where people smell colors or see sounds,” he said, and this kind of glitch in the brain can lead to strange side effects during arousal and orgasm as the brain becomes flooded with activity.
Arousal can produce compulsive sneezing in some, spontaneous tears for others, he said, and more commonly, women will urinate a bit.
“Some girls call it spending a penny,” Wilshire said, referring to the small loss of urine during arousal or orgasm.
Given that the same nerve serves the genital and urinary system, “it’s easy to see how one affects the other,” Wilshire said.
Michael Castleman, sex educator, counselor and founder of GreatSexAfter40.com, added that “sneezing and crying are the two that are most widely noted. They’re just about emotional release and people release emotions differently.”
“When it comes to human sexuality and the human sexual arousal response there is a tremendous degree of variation,” said Dr. David Greenfield of the Healing Center in West Hartford, Conn. “Although there is a range of behavior that is ‘normal’ there are many idiosyncratic sexual arousal responses that people have.”
As to Seagal’s alleged idiosyncrasy, Greenfield “cannot guess what [it] might be,” but says that “there are many unique responses that we have that seem unusual and in some cases they are less unusual then we might think.”
Waldo said that Nguyen will present her detailed description of Seagal’s alleged “unique reaction to arousal” at the trial. No court date has been set at this time.
