Countertenor David Daniels and his husband Scott Walters are set to go on trial on Friday, August 4 over charges that they sexually assaulted singer Samuel Schultz after a performance in 2010.

According to the New York Times opening arguments will begin in Houston and Daniels and Walters face one felony count of aggravated sexual assault.

Daniels and Walters are accused of having assaulted Schultz in May 2010 after he went to hear Daniels in Handel’s “Xerxes” at Houston Grand Opera. According to Schultz, he was invited to Daniels and Walters’s apartment where both drugged him. Schultz said that he awoke alone, naked, and bleeding from the rectum.

Daniels and Walters allege that the encounter was consensual and in 2019, when the couple was indicted, their lawyer Matt Hennessy said, “David and Scott are innocent of any wrongdoing. Sam Schultz is not a victim. He never would have gotten this much attention from his singing, and he knows and resents that fact. He waited eight years to complain about adult, consensual sex to ride the #MeToo movement to unearned celebrity. We will fight this.” No new statements have been made since then.

According to a Houston police officer, D.H. Escobar, he believes the charging documents are “credible and reliable.”

The Houston Chronicle is reporting that Daniels has requested that if he is found guilty, the jury decide his punishment and that the panel consider probation.

Additionally, the Harris County prosecutor has requested the judge bar any reference to Schultz’s comments about Plácido Domingo during the trial “in order not to prejudice the jury.” Schultz was outspoken about Domingo’s case when he served as Vice president of the American Guild of Musical Artists. He resigned in 2020 after leaks detailed an alleged settlement between Domingo and AGMA. At the time Schultz noted that when “AGMA works only for its most powerful (and sometimes predatory) members and refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of victims’ voices, it has failed its membership.” The judge has not decided on the matter.

Schultz accused David Daniels and his husband Scott Walters of rape back in 2018 in a New York Daily News report and also took to social media to tell his story. Following the accusations Daniels was removed from the San Francisco Opera’s production of “Orlando” and fired from the University of Michigan. He was later indicted with Walters in 2019 and has been out of the spotlight ever since.