by An actor that he is accused Kevin Spacey that he sexually assaulted him, as a 14-year-old recounted the episode for a New York jury on Friday, testifying that he felt helpless when Spacey climbed on top of him in bed.
“I was frozen” Anthony Rapp he said on the second day of a civil trial in Manhattan. “I was pinned under him. I didn’t know what to do.”
In a halting voice, Rapp testified that the then-26-year-old Spacey had invited him to a party at his Upper East Side apartment when both actors were starring on Broadway in 1986. He said after wandering into a bedroom to watch TV and leave the adults, a drunk Spacey joined him after the other guests had left.
Rapp said that after Spacey picked him up and laid him on the bed, he pressed the “full weight” of his chest and groin into him. She said she found a way to slip out of the apartment, but not before Spacey asked, “Are you sure you want to leave?”
Yuki Iwamura / AP
Asked by his lawyer how he would respond to anyone who downplayed the seriousness of what happened, Rapp responded by describing himself as a scared child trying to fend off an adult.
He added: “I’m grateful that this 14-year-old boy had the means to escape. I’d also say he shouldn’t have gone through this in the first place.”
As Rapp, sometimes taking deep breaths, testified, Spacey scribbled notes on a pad or sat with his arms crossed.
Rapp, 50, made the accusation in 2017, when he was the first among others to largely shut down Spacey’s career with multiple allegations of inappropriate touching or sexual advances.
Spacey’s legal team said Rapp’s accusation is false — he never attended the party, they said. And even if it had happened as Rapp described, they argued, it would not have constituted sexual promotion.
At the time, Spacey was starring in the Netflix political thriller House of Cards. He is also known for his role in the 1999 film “American Beauty”, which won him an Oscar.
As a teenager, Rapp starred in movies like “Adventures in Babysitting.” He later was part of the original Broadway cast of “Rent” and is now a regular on “Star Trek: Discovery” on television.
The trial’s first witness, Andrew Holtzman, claimed that Spacey had made a similar move against him years earlier.
Yuki Iwamura / AP
Holtzman, now 68, testified that he was working in his office at the New York Shakespeare Festival in the summer of 1981 when Spacey walked in and sat down at a spare desk used by actors and others who worked for the seven-theater company.
Holtzman said Spacey didn’t say anything when he walked into the office in a windbreaker and “skinny blue jeans,” but recalled that he knew him because he had seen his picture in the program for a play called “Henry IV,” in which Spacey was starring. that time.
As he finished a phone call, Holtzman stood up at his desk and a sexually aroused Spacey walked up to him, lifted him by the crotch and placed him on the desk, Holtzman recalled.
“What are you doing? Get off me!” he said he told Spacey.
“I could feel his erection in my body,” Holtzman said.
After a few more minutes, Spacey climbed off him, grabbed his windbreaker and bag and stormed out of the office, Holtzman said.
“He was angry,” she said.
On cross-examination, a lawyer for Spacey, 63, showed Holtzman six pages from a program about “Henry IV,” and Holtzman said he did not see Spacey’s photo.
Rapp is seeking $40 million in damages for the psychological trauma he says he suffered as a result of the encounter with Spacey. He will return to the witness stand when the trial resumes on Tuesday.
Spacey faces similar charges elsewhere. Earlier this summer, British prosecutors authorized police to charge Spacey with four counts of sexual assault against three men. The alleged incidents took place in London between 2005 and 2013. He has since pleaded not guilty. That trial is expected to begin on June 6, 2023, the British Press Association news agency reported.
In August, ruled a Los Angeles judge that Spacey and his production companies must pay the makers of “House of Cards” nearly $31 million in damages stemming from his 2017 firing for sexually harassing crew members. He has denied the charges through his lawyers.
