A New York jury on Thursday concluded that Kevin Spacey should not be held liable for allegedly sexually assaulting a then-adolescent actor, bringing a close to a $40 million civil lawsuit and marking the end, for now, of any legal threat to the A-lister on American soil.
Taking about an hour to deliberate, the jury dismissed the battery claim at the core of a lawsuit filed by Anthony Rapp after nine days of testimony in Manhattan federal court. Rapp and Spacey both took the stand to tell their respective versions of an encounter Rapp says took place when he was 14 years old.
The result marks another legal win for Spacey, who has dodged allegations of sexual violence and misconduct from over a dozen people since Rapp first detailed his story in a 2017 Buzzfeed article. Despite the wide array of claims of predatory abuse, Rapp’s civil trial was the first time Spacey actually faced a jury in connection to the allegations against him. In the United Kingdom, he has pleaded not guilty to charges he sexually assaulted three men between March 2005 and August 2008 during his tenure as artistic director at London’s Old Vic Theatre. He will face that trial next June.
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As the verdict was read, Spacey stood up and hugged each of his lawyers, and Rapp appeared emotionless. Spacey defense lawyer Jennifer Keller told The Daily Beast after the verdict that her client “is grateful to live in a country where the citizens have a right to trial by impartial jurors who make their decision based on evidence and not rumor or social media. And he is deeply thankful to this particular jury.”
“Their verdict was swift and decisive. Justice was done today,” Keller added.
Richard Steigman, an attorney for Rapp, told The Daily Beast on Thursday that his client “told his truth in court” and that “while we respect the jury’s verdict, nothing changes that.”
Throughout the civil trial, Rapp’s lawyers said that Spacey invited him to a party in his apartment after a night out with another actor, John Barrowman. At the party, they said, a drunk Spacey lifted Rapp up, placed him on a bed, and climbed on top of him in an attempt to initiate sex.
“It felt very wrong,” Rapp said on the stand about the incident. “I didn’t want him to do it, and I had no reason that made any sense of why he would do it. I felt like a deer in headlights.”
To support his claims, Rapp’s lawyer called Andrew Holzman to the stand. Holzman, 68, told jurors that Spacey lifted him “by the crotch” while he was a former New York public film coordinator in 1981. “He was wearing tight blue jeans and through the jeans, I very clearly saw a very large erection,” he added. “He sort of lifted me up by my crotch and sort of pushed me back on my desk.”
During closing arguments on Thursday, Rapp’s lawyer insisted that his client had consistently told the truth about the 1986 incident for decades, while suggesting Spacey’s only defense was to accuse his client of carrying on a “35-year crusade.”
“This was trauma. But they say he just wants to bring Spacey down,” Steigman told jurors. “If this were only about bringing Mr. Spacey down, couldn’t he have come up with a better story? Anthony has done this to hold Kevin Spacey accountable.”
But Spacey’s lawyer, Jennifer Keller, planted enough doubt in jurors’ minds, arguing that “Rapp has falsely alleged abuse that never occurred at a party that was never held in a room that did not exist.” Urging jurors to ignore the politics of his case, Keller insisted that Rapp “tried to hitch his wagon to the #MeToo movement” and stressed that Barrowman did not corroborate Rapp’s story.
“Mr. Rapp is well known now for taking down one of the greatest actors of his generation,” Keller added, maintaining that Rapp was jealous of Spacey’s career.
After Rapp’s allegations Buzzfeed article, several other accusers came out with similar Spacey stories—including at least eight crew members on House of Cards. Ultimately, two possible prosecutions collapsed and one of his accusers died.
Spacey himself denied the incident on the stand, growing emotional as he told jurors that he never had any sexual attraction to Rapp. He also told jurors that his father was a neo-Nazi who verbally abused him and often called him gay slurs, Spacey said he was “frightened” when he first heard of Rapp’s allegations against him but insisted they were bogus.
His only regret, he said, was coming out as gay in a 2017 statement addressing the sexual assault allegation against him, rather than in some other context. In the statement at the time, which Spacey posted on his Twitter, he said that while he did not remember the alleged encounter with Rapp, he apologized “for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.”
“I was being encouraged to apologize and I’ve learned a lesson, which is never apologize for something you didn’t do,” Spacey said on Monday.
