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From the witness stand, Kevin Spacey denies sex abuse claims : NPR


Actor Kevin Spacey arrives in Federal Court to hear his civil case on October 12 in New York. Spacey is facing a jury in a New York City courtroom in a civil trial alleging he sexually abused a 14-year-old actor in the 1980s when he was 26.

Mary Altaffer / AP


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Mary Altaffer / AP


Actor Kevin Spacey arrives in Federal Court to hear his civil case on October 12 in New York. Spacey is facing a jury in a New York City courtroom in a civil trial alleging he sexually abused a 14-year-old actor in the 1980s when he was 26.

Mary Altaffer / AP

NEW YORK – Kevin Spacey testified in a New York courtroom on Monday that he never performed sexual acts with actor Anthony Rapp, who sued, Oscar-winning actor announced tried to put him to bed when he was 14 years old.

Self-identifying as “Kevin Spacey Fowler,” the actor was asked about Rapp’s claim that the then 26-year-old Spacey picked him up as a bride after a party in 1986 and put him to bed before lay on him.

Rapp testified earlier in the trial that he struggled from underneath Spacey during the fully clothed encounter before fleeing the apartment, only for Spacey to follow him to the door and ask if he was sure. Are you sure you want to leave?

“They’re not true,” Spacey said of the allegations.

Spacey said he met Rapp and another aspiring actor, John Barrowman, backstage after Spacey’s Broadway performance in The journey of the day is long into the night. He said he took them out to dinner, to a nightclub and finally to his studio apartment, where he flirted with Barrowman – then 19 – but showed no interest in Rapp before The two guests left.

“Anthony Rapp looks like a kid and John Barrowman looks like a man,” Spacey said in an account backed by Barrowman’s takedown.

Rapp testified that he and Barrowman had come home shortly after a nightclub outing and that it took several days for Spacey to invite him to the apartment for the first time. He said Spacey waited for the other guests at the party to leave before making his move.

Spacey also described his frustration over a 2017 news release in which Rapp went public with his allegations.

At the time, with the growth of the #MeToo movement, “The industry was very nervous. There was a lot of fear in the air about who would be next,” he said.

He added: “I’m shocked. I’m scared and confused. … I know I’ve never been alone with Anthony Rapp.”

He also told jurors that he never had “any sexual interest in Anthony Rapp or any of the children. That I know.”

Spacey rolls his eyes as he describes being pressured to claim that he doesn’t remember anything that happened to Rapp, but would regret “if” somehow it was true. His managers say that “it’s the best way to curb ‘a crisis that’s going to get worse’ and avoid being accused of being a ‘shame victim,'” he said.

Now, he added, “I regret my whole statement.”

Spacey was also asked if he’s been private about his personal life during his career.

“I grew up in a very complex dynamic family,” he said, explaining that his father’s harsh words when he was young made him hate bigotry and intolerance.

“My father was a white supremacist and neo-Nazi,” says Spacey. “That meant me and my siblings were forced to listen to my father for hours preaching to us about his beliefs.”

Spacey called it “the humiliation and horror of having friends come over” because he was never sure what his father might say to them or to him.

“Everything about what’s going on in that house is something I have to keep to myself. We’ve never talked about it. I’ve never talked about these things publicly.” I said.

When Spacey became interested in theater, he says, he endured the screams of his father, who used to yell at me for thinking I might be gay.

Spacey’s testimony began two hours after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan made his statement of willful mental distress after Rapp’s attorneys finished presenting their evidence. Kaplan said elements of the statement overlap with Rapp’s claim that he was the victim of the attack and the battery.

Spacey’s attorney argued to dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds that Rapp’s attorneys failed to substantiate his claims.

Kaplan said the trial could proceed with the assault and battery claims asserted by Rapp, a 50-year-old regular on the internet. Star Trek: Discovery on television. He was part of the original Broadway cast of Rent.

Spacey, 63, is an Oscar-winning actor popular on the Netflix series Dealer when statements by Rapp and others in 2017 abruptly derailed his career.

Rapp has been active in Precious son on Broadway in 1986 when he met Spacey.

Rapp testified a few days earlier in the trial, which entered its third week on Monday.

The Associated Press usually doesn’t name sexual assault accusers unless they make them public, as Rapp did.

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