Kevin Spacey in court over 1980s sex misconduct claim

NEW YORK

Five years after misconduct allegations ended his Hollywood career, Kevin Spacey appeared in a New York court on Oct. 6 to face fellow actor Anthony Rapp’s accusation that the disgraced Oscar winner sexually assaulted Rapp in 1986 when he was a minor.

One of the first stars to be caught up in the global #MeToo reckoning over sexual abuse, the 63-year-old Spacey smiled as he sat in a blue suit, white shirt and light blue tie just steps away from his accuser in federal court in Manhattan.

“Star Trek: Discovery” star Rapp, now 50, filed a complaint in September 2020 against Spacey for advances and an alleged sexual assault at a party in Manhattan in 1986, when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was in his late 20s. He is seeking $40 million in damages.

Spacey has always denied allegations of sexual abuse. But during arguments in the case presided over by Judge Lewis Kaplan, Rapp’s lawyer Peter Saghir told a jury of six men and six women that Spacey committed “unacceptable” acts against the teen Rapp “intentionally to satisfy the drive of his sexual desires.”

The alleged assault against Rapp “never should have happened,” Saghir continued. “He was 14 years old.”

Spacey, whose full name is Kevin Spacey Fowler, has disappeared from public view after becoming caught up in the early days of #MeToo.

According to a court document, Rapp claims that during the 1986 party, Spacey lifted him up, and that his hand “grazed” his buttocks while doing so. Rapp claims Spacey then placed him back down on a bed and “briefly placed his own clothed body partially beside and partially across” the 14-year-old’s.

During his testimony 35 years after the incident, Rapp agreed there had been “no kissing, no undressing, no reaching under clothes, and no sexualized statements or innuendo,” during an incident that had lasted no more than two minutes.

Spacey’s lawyer Jennifer Keller told the jury, however, that such an assault “never happened at all.”

Keller said that in the decades since the encounter at Spacey’s apartment, Rapp “repeated the same false story but never repeated it to the police.”

Rapp repeated it for “attention, sympathy” because he never became an international star, according to Spacey’s lawyer.

If found guilty, Spacey faces significant damages.