Kevin Spacey has been hit with a lawsuit filed by Anthony Rapp and another unidentified plaintiff, referred to as C.D., for alleged sexual assault. Spacey has faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct after Rapp first accused him in October of 2017. Fifteen others have come forward alleging abuse at the hands of Spacey and while multiple criminal investigations were opened against him, they have all since closed.
Spacey has receded from the public eye since the allegations have surfaced. Initially, Spacey sought to fight these allegations by deflecting and coming out as gay in his apology to Rapp while alleging that he does not remember the specific incident. This move was met with backlash not only because of the deflection but because of the conflation of his sexuality with his behavior. Spacey also blamed his behavior on drunkenness, but all of his excuses were not enough to deter the onslaught of allegations that arose after Rapp's initial accusations. Spacey has pleaded not guilty in all criminal cases.
According to Rolling Stone, Spacey is being accused of assault, battery, and intentional inflection of emotional distress. Rapp and C.D. are asking for unspecified damages. They were able to bring this lawsuit forward under the New York Child Victims Act which allows victims of child abuse to bring cases forth that would have otherwise expired under the statute of limitations. Rapp alleges that Spacey forced himself on him at a party in 1986, while C.D. details various encounters over the course of several months in the early eighties.
The initial accusations against Spacey came amidst a reckoning with sexual assault in Hollywood after accusations against Harvey Weinstein were also brought forward. Weinstein was convicted on two out of five criminal charges in New York this year, while he still awaits a criminal trial in Los Angeles. The allegations against Spacey saw him blackballed from the industry. His character on the critically acclaimed Netflix show House of Cards was killed off, with Robin Wright taking over as the lead. Spacey has not worked since, instead opting to release bizarre videos where he emulates his character from House of Cards, Frank Underwood.
The new complaint against Spacey is not surprising considered the barrage of lawsuits he's faced in recent years. Though most of these lawsuits—which have been brought in California, Massachusetts, and the United Kingdom—have been dropped, Spacey cannot escape them. The last project Spacey was to be involved in, All The Money in the World, replaced him entirely in post-production and Spacey has not appeared in anything since. His presence in both Hollywood and in the theatre community has all but vanished as he hides from the public eye. His lawyers did not return a request for comment from Rolling Stone.
Source: Rolling Stone
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