In a federal civil action launched by Anthony Rapp, 50, a New York jury sided with the 63-year-old, according to the Associated Press. The complainant filed a lawsuit against Spacey in 2020, alleging that Spacey raped him sexually more than three decades prior, when he was 14 and Spacey was 26.
In 2017, while the #MeToo movement was taking hold in Hollywood, Rapp described the alleged encounter in a BuzzFeed story. The actor claimed that the incident happened in 1986 after a party at Spacey’s apartment in New York City. Rapp alleged that an inebriated Spacey put him on a bed, climbed on top of him, and then grabbed his buttocks without his permission.
“It felt very wrong,” Rapp told the jury during the three-week trial. “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…I didn’t ask for him to do that. I didn’t want him to do that.”
Spacey denied the accusations, and his attorneys charged Rapp with fabricating a “story.” That was successful in persuading the jury that Rapp’s assertions were untrue by presenting documentation demonstrating that Spacey actually resided in a studio apartment rather than the one-bedroom residence Rapp had claimed.
“This isn’t a team sport where you’re either on the Me Too side, or you’re on the other side,” Spacey’s attorney Jennifer Keller told the jury. “This is a very different place. Our system requires evidence, proof, objective support for accusations provided to an impartial jury. However polarized as society may be today, it really should not have a place here. We’re here because Mr. Rapp has falsely alleged abuse that never occurred at a party that was never held in a room that did not exist.”