Kevin Spacey was not found guilty in the sexual assault trial against Anthony Rapp

As Deadline reports, This Thursday, October 20, the jury decided that Kevin Spacey is not responsible for the allegations of sexual abuse brought against him by Anthony Rapp.. The “Star Trek: Discovery” actor claimed in a 2017 article for Buzzfeed that he was sexually harassed by Spacey at a party in 1986, when he was only 14 and the Oscar-winning actor 26. Rapp claimed he was injured when Spacey climbed on top of him with the intention of having sex.

Rapp was asking for $ 40 million in compensation, but the jury ruled that Spacey didn’t touch the actor’s private parts that night.. “I was trapped under him. I didn’t know what to do”Rapp stated in his testimony, assuring that the “House of Cards” star had been drinking and took him to bed, where he climbed on top of him. Both of them knew each other at the time because they were part of the cast of two Broadway musicals..

Spacey denied these allegations in 2017, via his Twitter account, where he claimed he did not remember the meeting: “But if I have behaved as he describes, I owe him the deepest apologies for what would have been highly inappropriate conduct.”. Later, the actor was Banned from the hit Netflix series and digitally deleted from the film “All the Money in the World”.

However, during the trial he offered another testimony. He explained that he invited Rapp and his friend, John Barrowman, to dinner at his apartment, whose presence in the room was not indicated by Rapp.. Spacey flirted with this 19-year-old wannabe actor, not Rapp: “Anthony Rapp looked like a boy and Barrowman was a man”. Clearly, this court process forced the ‘American Beauty’ star out of the closet. For this reason, between tears, Spacey confessed before the Manhattan court that she had hidden his sexuality for years for fear of his father, who assures that he hates gays and who comes to catalog as “neo-Nazi”.

The jury, made up of 11 members (one of whom apologized for health problems), considered Rapp’s version a bit messy and attempted to take it apart. Because of this, underlined the contradictions that the artist had during the two weeks in which this process took place. For example, the date it all happened and that a friend of yours was present in the room, as we said earlier.

Rapp’s attorney Richard Steigman spoke at the end of the trial before the federal court in Manhattan: “The jury spoke. Antonio told the truth about him. We respect the jury’s verdict, but that doesn’t change the truth”.

#MeToo movement

Spacey is one of the main targets of the popular #MeToo movement, which began on social networks in October 2017 to voice sexual harassment complaints against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.. This had been considered untouchable until then despite the constant rumors that circulated around the figure of him. Today, pending some trials, Weinstein could end up being sentenced to up to 140 years in prison. From that moment on, the barrier of impunity that surrounded the director fell, and with it many other big shots of cinema, including Spacey himself, actor Danny Masterson (“That ’70s Show”) or director Paul Haggis (“Million Dollar Baby”), among others.

Following Rapp’s allegations, Spacey has received more than a dozen legal complaints, some of which he has already won.. Last May he was charged with four offenses committed against three people between 2005 and 2013 in England, of which he himself pleaded not guilty, but for which he will still have to answer for justice. In turn, in August was sentenced to pay $ 31 million to the producers of “House of Cards” for his conduct while filming the series making sure that his ending was rushed, which was considered a violation of his acting and production agreements.