Fallen Hollywood megastar Kevin Spacey has appeared in New York since Thursday in a civil lawsuit filed by American actor Anthony Rapp, who accuses him of sexual assault when he was 14 in 1986.
A two-time Oscar-winning stage, film and television actor, full name Kevin Spacey Fowler, 63, has disappeared from screens and boards since he was one of the first performers to be swept five years ago in October. of 2017, by the global wave #Metoo, born in the United States.
His accuser is American actor Anthony Rapp, who stars in the series Star Trek: Discovery who turns 51 this month. He had filed a complaint in September 2020 against Kevin Spacey for advances and an alleged sexual assault at a party in Manhattan in 1986.
“sincere apologies”
Anthony Rapp was a 14-year-old teenager. Kevin Spacey then had double.
Kevin Spacey, whose worldwide fame was built from the 1980s thanks to his characters in the movies American Beauty Y usual suspects and laughs house of cardsHe has always denied the sexual assault allegations.
At the end of October 2017, when the #Metoo movement launched by women in the world of cinema ended the untouchable producer Harvey Weinstein for the first time, Anthony Rapp accused Kevin Spacey for the first time, in great detail, in the middle BuzzFeedNews.
The next day on Twitter, Kevin Spacey offers him his “sincere apologies” for his “drunk and deeply inappropriate (male) behavior.”
After his 2020 complaint, Anthony Rapp’s lawsuit is being dropped in federal criminal court, but he is prospering in civil.
popular jury
Kevin Spacey will be tried, therefore, from 09:30 am on Thursday (13:30 GMT) by a popular jury of the Federal Civil Court in Manhattan presided over by Judge Lewis Kaplan, 77 years old.
“Mr. Spacey will appear on Thursday and throughout the trial. We hope that he will be able to defend himself before an impartial jury,” his lawyer, Jennifer Keller, told AFP in an email.
Before this civil jurisdiction, Kevin Spacey can be sentenced to a significant compensation.
But the initial accusation of “sexual assault” filed by Anthony Rapp was ultimately not upheld by Judge Kaplan, the federal magistrate considered that this qualification could not cover facts already prescribed and did not fall within the scope of a New York State child of 2019. protection law
However, Judge Kaplan acknowledges in his writ that, during the 1986 New York party, “as Mr. Rapp said, Mr. Fowler (Kevin Spacey, editor’s note) had picked him up, his hand had ‘rubbed ‘ the garment covering Mr. Rapp’s buttocks for a few seconds, then Mr. Fowler had Mr. Rapp placed on a bed, face up, before lying down fully clothed, briefly and partially on his side and over his Mr. Rapp who was only 14 years old. years.
“Don’t kiss, don’t touch”
The teenager was then quickly “extirpated” and left the party, according to justice.
During his statement, 35 years after the events, Anthony Rapp acknowledged that there was no “kissing, nudity, touching under clothing and statements or innuendos of a sexual nature” during an “exchange” that lasted no more than two minutes.
Kevin Spacey has already had problems with the law in the United States and the United Kingdom.
In August, a California judge ordered him to pay nearly $31 million to the producer of the series “House of Cards,” from which he had been fired following sexual harassment allegations.
Charges he has always denied.
In London he is being prosecuted for sexual assaults on three men between March 2005 and April 2013, when he was a theater director, and of which he pleaded not guilty last July.
And in Massachusetts, Kevin Spacey was charged with indecent assault and sexual assault on an 18-year-old bar worker in July 2016. The charges were dropped in July 2019.
Source: BFM TV
