Kevin Spacey wins “not liable” verdict in Anthony Rapp sexual assault case
Spacey's attorneys used their closing statement to accuse Star Trek: Discovery actor Rapp of being motivated by professional jealousy
Aux News Kevin Spacey
[Note: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault.]
Kevin Spacey has been found “not liable” for battery against Star Trek actor Anthony Rapp, according to NBC News. The verdict arrived this afternoon, bringing to a close the civil suit Rapp has levied against Spacey, accusing the actor of him of sexually assaulting him in 1986, when Rapp was just 14.
The jury apparently didn’t need much time to make up its mind; deliberations only went on for 90 minutes before the verdict was returned. Spacey’s lawyers—who used their closing statements to accuse Rapp of fabricating his allegations out of professional jealousy—issued a statement today, saying they were “very grateful to the jury for seeing through these false allegations.” Rapp’s attorneys, meanwhile, noted that, “Anthony told his truth in court. While we respect the jury’s verdict, nothing changes that.”
Rapp was one of the first (but by no means the last) to come forward with allegations against Spacey, claiming that the actor, who he’d struck up an acquaintance with while Rapp was a teenager appearing in his first Broadway show, invited him to a party, and, after the other guests had left, “an apparently drunken Spacey entered the bedroom, lifted him up, placed him on a bed and rested his full weight on top of him.” Spacey has denied the accusations, both in public, and in court, where both men testified. (Spacey had previously issued a tweet saying that he did not remember the encounter, but wrote that, “I owe [Rapp] the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior”; Spacey recanted the statement in court.)
Spacey is also currently facing a court case in the U.K., related to charges stemming from accusations from three men. He was also recently ordered, by an L.A. judge, to pay the producers of his Netflix show House Of Cards $31 million to cover costs the show incurred in removing him from the series after the allegations against him came to light.
Update, 10/20/22 at 6:00 p.m.: Per Variety, Rapp has now issued a statement on social media, writing, “Bringing this lawsuit was always about shining a light, as part of the larger movement to stand up against all forms of sexual violence. I pledge to keep on advocating for efforts to ensure that we can live and work in a world that is free from sexual violence of any kind. I sincerely hope that survivors continue to tell their stories and fight for accountability.”
86 Comments
I’m just here for Recognitions…………I guess he’s late.
He got word that an office worker in Duluth put bacon in his fried rice, and he’s on his way there to lecture the man on cultural appropriation. I’m sure he’ll be here to weigh in as soon as he’s done feeling superior elsewhere.
He must’ve hit traffic coming out from under his bridge..
I can try to fill in…here goes:
Oh, so we’re letting rapists go free now. Cool.It’s not the same, is it?
No, but it’s close enough for a star
On the bright side, Rapp is still alive. That’s more than we can say for most of Kevin Spacey’s accusers.
.
Rapp is at least still working. Spacey sure isn’t.
But I bet he’s not getting invited to as many parties.
How the fuck is Netflix owed $31 million over accusations where the victim gets nothing?
So we can watch Kevin Spacey movies again? (Hurries off to find dusty VHS of The Ref.)
Not only that, but it’s on: American Beauty 2: The Revenge.
Don’t waste your time. They replaced the actor who played the floating plastic bag, and it’s very obvious and distracting.
I heard it was a paper bag this time. Don’t you hate the divers…….nope nope. I’m sorry, I thought I could make this joke, but I can’t.
That’s a darker and better joke than I could have thought of. Bravo.
K-PAX TOO about to be greenlit.
K-PAX TOO about to be greenlit.
Great joke considering he likely raped and murdered people. Pretty funny.
You could always watch Kevin Sorbo movies instead.I’m feeling pretty dis-a-PPOINT-ed myself right about now.
If the defense’s closing arguments were true, does that many Rapp is neither proud nor grateful for his role in Star Trek Discovery or does that simply go without saying?
That concludes our trial and that’s a Rapp………..I’ll see myself out.
At least they didn’t try to use Rapp’s lyrics as evidence…
See, it can always be worse.
Boooo! Lol
He was also recently ordered, by an L.A. judge, to pay the producers of his Netflix show House of Cards $31 million to cover costs the show incurred in removing him from the series after the allegations against him came to light.Should he successfully defend himself in all cases, what would happen to this $31 million judgement? It surely couldn’t stand.
It certainly could. It’s really hard to take down an arbitration award, and he’s lost the cases where he argued that there was basis for an arbitration appeal or for a court to invalidate the arbitrator’s decision. It’s worth remembering that the arbitration wasn’t just about the Rapp case (and the U.K. cases seem to be another thing altogether). He was also reportedly putting hands on people on staff and crew of House of Cards.
What? That’s not how… anything works. In civil or criminal law. Spacey basically admitted to Rapp’s claims, even though he recanted them on the stand. He also has a bunch of pending lawsuits, across the fucking world, for similarly accosting teenage boys. “Not liable,” doesn’t mean Spacey didn’t do it. This was a civil case, that Rapp brought to bring Spacey’s predatory behavior to light, which has now resulted in many more men coming forward and criminal cases. In this case, Spacey admits to having teenage boys over to his parties, giving them booze, but skated on the battery charge in regards to Rapp. That’s not an “exoneration” of what he was doing. It also has no bearing on contract law. In the MRC case it’s the same excuses from Spacey: “sexual innuendos” and “innocent horseplay,” which has two appeals and the last judge pointing out the defense as “fail[ed] to demonstrate that this is even a close case” It doesn’t matter how Spacey’s many pending trials end up being decided, because, won or lost, they demonstrate a level of misconduct that far exceeds the moral conduct clauses in his contract.
It may not be an exoneration, but a 90 minute defense verdict is a pretty good indication that the evidence in this case wasn’t all that strong.
No, it doesn’t. It’s hard enough for women to win a case like this. But if the victim was male? Those odds drop even more significantly. This like many other cases have nothing to do with evidence but with the celebrity of the accused.
Absent complete incompetence on plaintiff’s counsels’ part, the jury is going to be made up of at least some people who were likely to lean toward Rapp’s position. The fact that they made it to the jury room, elected a foreperson and probably did an initial canvass of each juror’s thoughts and were out in 90 minutes indicates that jurors who would otherwise be inclined toward Rapp’s position didn’t see any merit to the case.
Absolutely. 90 minutes is a short as hell deliberation, as these things can go on for days or weeks, so 90 minutes is as much of an idictment of Rapp as anything. That no juror found any reasonable way to argue for Rapp in that 90 minutes, as that could easily have delayed it for hours, in a civil case, where reasonable doubt is a lot harder to get a hold of, is only furthering that. If anything, one could argue this is even more of a “not guilty” than getting it in a true criminal trial, if you wanted to do the mental gymnastics of it being easier to find someone liable, than to find them guilty, but eh. That would set a pretty stupid precedent.
As I noted, Rapp and his attorneys didn’t have an expectation of winning the case, which is why they weren’t particularly broken up about losing. It was mainly to get other people who may have been victimized by Spacey to come forward. Which worked. Winning on a NY civil battery charge (after the judge questionably threw out the two other charges especially) regarding an incident that happened over 35 years ago in a he said/he said scenario is nearly impossible. The only evidence comes down to who the jury likes more, and Spacey is a great actor, who regaled the jury all kinds of displays of emotions, and even Jack Lemmon impressions at one point.
I’ll take your word for it. Without making any defence of him, nor assuming he will beat every charge, it would seem odd to me if the allegations didn’t lead to any conviction but he still had to pay. But then, that’s the weird anomaly that the OJ Simpson case ended up in. The law is an ass.
You just don’t need as much evidence in a civil trial. Also, certain evidence may not be allowed in a criminal trial that is allowed in a civil trial. Example, let’s say that Spacey was recorded in a phone call admitting guilt but his attorneys are able to create doubt with the judge in a criminal trial that his voice may have been manufactured and edited. That judge could say that evidence was inadmissible. In a civil trial the judge has more leeway and allow that as evidence. Reasonable doubt doesn’t apply the same way in a civil trial.
These are different cases, varying from civil to criminal, and one has no bearing on the other. The MRC contract suit was primarily about Spacey sexually harassing men on the set of House of Cards. It wasn’t solely based on any outside allegations. When it went to arbitration the arbitrator was presented with many hours of video and deposition and found from that evidence that Spacey violated MRC’s sexual harassment policy with respect to, not one, but five House of Cards crew members. The arbitrator also found that the $3o.9 million loss calculation by MRC, due to having to change the production entirely, was conservative. They could’ve went for a good bit more. When Spacey’s lawyers tried to overturn the arbitration they said his conduct amounted to nothing but some “sexual innuendo” and “horseplay.” As though those are proper actions in a working environment, and they were summarily dismissed. With the judge, Recana, noting that Spacey “fails to demonstrate that this is even a close case.” In contract law, when both parties find themselves in arbitration, whether through expressed agreement or contractual obligation, the arbitrator’s decision is final. For a judge to even entertain overruling arbitration there would have to be massive evidence of some kind of legal malfeasance presented.The TLDR version: one case has nothing to do with the other.
It’s not a criminal trial, a not liable verdict in 90 minutes is the closest to a “not guilty” in a civil trial like this that you can get. As you can’t, quite literally, declare someone “not guilty” in a civil trial, which is not about guilt, but whether someone is liable for damages. So, it basically is an exoneration, as far as this case goes. His other stuff, not so much, but here, the court and legal system has basically declared that Anthony Rapp is a liar, and I’ll stand by the law. The law knows better than you or I, after all, the jury had to go through the entire court case, not us.
The man is clearly a pedophile and a rape fetishist. It’s so beyond creepy when people rush to say, “but actually.” No, there were not dozens of misunderstandings. He’s a criminal.
I agree Spacey is likely a pedophile and predator.I do not agree that he is a criminal if he is cleared in court. I know it’s a nuance, but accusations are just that. People have to be able to clear their names. Otherwise we have a society where allegations, even false, can destroy a person’s life.Spacey will probably be a criminal soon, as the other case is still pending, but he’s not one right now.
Which has little bearing on my comment and doesn’t represent anything I said. I made and make no pronouncements on his guilt but it would surely be anomalous for him to beat all the charges but still have to pay Netflix. However, who knows if he will? As I said above, the law is an ass.
People really can’t handle their favorite actor ends up being awful. I noticed it with the Depp case because even if you don’t believe that Heard was abused, any normal person would still condemn him for you know….assaulting a crew member, sending truly heinous texts about murdering and raping their partner, etc.
People just rather do the mental gymnastics so they don’t have to be uncomfortable with their choices and their likes. And I get it to a certain extent, Usual Suspects and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil are some of my favorite films but I still kept the DVDs of those films and I just won’t support any of his future work. It really is that simple.
Depp was never my favourite actor, but I was always under the belief that both were abusive towards the other, which while not exactly what the case ended up stating, it may as well have been. Heard, probably, has histrionic personality disorder, and Depp had (I believe he doesn’t anymore, but I could be wrong) a substance abuse problem at the time. They might not be horrible people (and I don’t believe they are), but they were to each other, and that’s all that really mattered, as Heard’s claim was predicated on her being a victim of abuse, not an abuser herself (which she was). And Depp’s team successfully proved that, and more to the point, that it was primarily her who committed any form of abuse (insofar as her throwing bottles at him, or shitting on his bed), such that the court decided she was liable for damages to Depp. As a civil trial, it was enough. If Depp tried to get her charged as a criminal abuser, I don’t think it’d work, again, due to the fact he also abused her.
At the end of the day abuse towards a crew member on the set of film where you are a star of the franchise and taking no accountability for it shows an abusive personality. His violence existed outside that relationship. (That of course doesn’t mean Heard also wasn’t violent, this isn’t a defense of her).
If we go by that logic, we’d have to argue many of our favourite stars are abusers. I can think of two off the top of my head, and one was encouraged (he’s become famous for it) to do it, in the form of Christian Bale and Gordon Ramsay. This is not to say being “abusive” is a good thing, I just feel that if it isn’t criminal, I don’t generally give a fuck. People sometimes get emotional. Holding them to impeccable standards is something I generally won’t do. You can, and you’re more than welcome to, but I, quite simply, fundamentally disagree with it.
Yes, they are abusive. You don’t put your hands on someone and you don’t scream like a lunatic and throw things or you get fired. It really is that simple and that even shouldn’t be considered a difference of opinion.
But supposed if you aren’t on the receiving end of it it doesn’t matter to you. Which sort explains why Harvey Weinstein got away with it to because outside of his sexual assaults he was know to be violent towards other producers. I guess turning the other cheek worked out real well there.
You blatantly ignored my point about other people who have been abusive (I highly doubt you boycotted Nolan’s Batman films, for example), so thanks for that. As for Weinstein, that’s a complete non sequitor, and you know it. Just because one person was abusive on set and was a sexual abuser, does not constitute all abusers on set being sexual predators. Bill Cosby was a sexual predator, and was not abusive on set, for example. You’re being like a sensationalist media outlet with that statement. It honestly seems like you’re trying to imply that Johnny Depp is a sexual abuser, which, wow. It’s entirely possible, but it’s also entirely possible that you yourself are a sexual predator, so I’d rather not entertain entirely theoretical situations.Honestly, at this point, you just seem to have something against Johnny personally, and seem more than willing to look past Amber Heard, who is also abusive, to sake your own desire for some big media guy to be human garbage, and you should just admit it.
I said they are abusive, it was my first sentence but at the end of the day they didn’t put their hands on anyone to my knowledge. But I also don’t watch that British chef because watching people get yelled at over cheese isn’t something that entertains me.
Also, I didn’t just listen to the US trial but also the UK trial. So yeah, I believe Heard because I listened to evidence that wasn’t presented at US trial. And I actually listened to the both trials not just read Twitter threads and articles. I also read research about how domestic abuse manifests. Do I think Heard is the perfect victim? Nope. Maybe she has mental health issue that escalated the violence? Yeah. You get two people with severe childhood trauma and it usually doesn’t end well but hitting back isn’t usually considered abusive. But at the end of the day I do believe her version of events.
I didn’t mean to imply I thought Depp was a sexual predator. I was just pointing out how once you ignore powerful men’s bad behavior they just escalate. If they aren’t going to respect a crew member’s body autonomy in public, on set, you think he is respecting that behind the scenes? The things he said about his ex-partners in text messages (and I am also talking about Vanessa Paradis) was also vile.
Look I didn’t take this situation lightly. Of all the men been accused Depp hurt me a lot. I grew up watching Edward Scissorhands at every slumber party, Ed Wood is one of my favorite movies and I will stand by my belief that Johnny Depp not being nominated was travesty. I could go on but I won’t. I will now no longer reply to you. Cheers!
Entirely fair opinions. I much prefer what you said here over what you said before, as you are seemingly far less hyperbolic. I disagree on Heard, but if you want to believe that bottle threw itself, that’s entirely your prerogative. Ultimately, what happens to them means little to us, at the end of the day, as that issue was hyper-politicised as a result of the sort-of zeitgeist of current cancel culture and public opinion being swayed by whomever publishes the first polemic from a common populist perspective. Irregardless, rock on, my dude.
It will stand unless he appeals that specific judgment and wins, which is by no means likely. First, it was based on an arbitration and he may have waived certain rights as part of his contract with Netflix, making it difficult to appeal further. Secondly, that lawsuit was related to acts on the set of the show that violated the Netflix sexual harassment policy, which may be a far more stringent standard than demanded by criminal or even civil law. And certainly winning cases related to other incidents would have no bearing on the Netflix judgement.
They fire him, and now HE has to to pay THEM? wtf kinda lawyers does Spacey has?
I think Spacey deserves his bad Rapp.
Every other new site’s title: “Kevin Spacey did not molest Anthony Rapp when he was 14,” leaving out, “according to the jury.”
Well this sucks.
Huh. Rapp originated a role in one of the most successful musicals in history, but sure. Jealousy.
Isn’t that the sin Spacey’s character in Seven is “guilty” of?Usually I wouldn’t put much note into that but given those fucking creepy House of Cards videos he did.
Pedantically, it’s envy, not jealousy, although there is lots of usage overlap between the two words.
I’ve always used jealousy where the negative emotions are directed at the individual who has what the other person wants and envy where those emotions are instead directed at the world or oneself. Covetousness, on the other (third?) hand, seems more like entitlement.
I dunno about entitlement specifically; I think that “covetousness” is more or less an interchangeable but archaic synonym for “envy.” Personally I see envy as “I also want to have what that person has,” and jealousy as “I want to be the only one who has this thing.” E.g. Envy is, you have an awesome hat and I wish I also had that had (but don’t have any desire for you to not have the hat). Jealousy is, that’s my girlfriend and I’ll punch anyone who I think is trying to take her from me.
I mean…in terms of stature and fame and Oscars (pre-sex predator accusations of course), Spacey>>>Rapp. But this sounds like a dig Spacey told his lawyers (undoubtedly in that weird Southern villain voice he used in that video a few years ago) to throw in during his victory lap. I like Rapp’s long-term career prospects a lot more than Spacey’s LOL.
Yeah, and Bill Cosby got out of prison. You think I give a fuck about the judgments of the US legal system? Spacey can still rot.
Yeah, and Bill Cosby got out of prison. You think I give a fuck about the judgments of the US legal system?
Cosby got out of prison because duly elected D.A. (and future Trump impeachment defense lawyer) Bruce Castor decided to cut a deal with Cosby that he wouldn’t be prosecuted. That way, Castor reasoned, Cosby couldn’t take the 5th in a civil suit (you can’t invoke your right against self incrimination if what you say can’t incriminate you). That may have been a stupid decision in retrospect, but as the D.A. he was empowered to make it.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed Cosby’s conviction because the subsequent DA should’ve honored that agreement. Difficult to stomach as that may be, that decision was 100% correct. Plea bargaining, including plea agreements in exchange for testimony, are often essential in securing convictions. If prosecutors (or their successors in the office) could renege on such agreements willy-nilly, nobody would enter into them, and the criminal justice system would grind to a halt.
To be clear, the “judgment” of the PA Supreme Court wasn’t that Cosby was innocent. Sometimes upholding the law means a guilty man goes free. It sucks, but so be it. I’d rather live under a fair system than one that prioritizes convictions at all costs.
“grind to a halt”I’m not sure about that. If plea bargains weren’t allowed, that would just change the calculus on which cases were worth prosecuting. (Although it would take some time for the system to adjust, obviously.)
It would take a generation for prosecutors and D.A.s to stop regarding their conviction rate as the measure of their success and the main number to parade for voters, where applicable. Without actual directives from the DOJ and just relying on cultural change, I mean.
I feel like conviction rate is always going to be a metric they use as long as it’s something that affects whether they get to keep their jobs (because they’re elected officials) and whether they get to use it as a springboard to higher office. I don’t think that would change meaningfully if plea bargains were removed; instead of going for pleas to have a high conviction rate (a plea and a trial are very different things and grouping them together under a single metric is self-evidently total nonsense), they’d just have to focus on picking trials they’re confident they can win. Which might lead to side effects like working with police to make sure they arrest people who can be convicted, which would possibly be even worse. It’s a whole big interrelated system of madness, to be honest.
The system isn’t fair you dumbfuck. The system doesn’t make mistakes that free poor rapists. Only rich rapists. I know your baby brain doesn’t want to face the dark reality of the US legal system but please fuck off with your defense of a rapist.
the US appears to have evolved a new type of consequence called “OJ guilt” where an obviously guilty person goes free thanks to a shockingly expensive legal defense and highly skilled PR team but is then basically a pariah for the rest of their life. It’s harder to make a living, most of their interactions are with the fringes of society (people who think they’re cool and want a selfie OR people who think they’re guilty and want to hurt them). It’s not justice by any stretch but it’s the best our legal system and society can shit out apparently because more important than anything, someone somewhere is making money off of their still walking free.
The USA is an evil country run by evil people filled with evil people. That’s why Jeffrey Epstein’s black book is still a secret.
LOL I can think of a thousand reasons to call the US evil but Epstein’s black book is right here: https://epsteinsblackbook.com/
Give this man his career back.
Back before any of this stuff came to light, a colleague of mine who worked at a college in Maryland for a bit talked about how he and some of his team (he was a young assistant coach) would go out to restaurants and bars together, and Spacey lived in the area. He mentioned that Spacey seemed to become fixated on one of the guys on the team and would always try to buy him drinks, follow him around the bars, invite him to his home, etc. Again, this was before any of this stuff came to light. I’m not saying anything. I’m just saying. When this stuff came to light, I was not surprised based on that anecdote.
ive heard similar stories of someone who was his stand in of his in a film.regardless of this verdict hes still a creep
There’s a restauranter in my hometown that gets straight college guys really drunk in an effort to seduce them. A court case will happen one day. I know it.
Ronald McDonald?
Grimace has stories to tell and over eats as a coping mechanism .
Robble robble!
They just call him “The King”
“Bringing this lawsuit was always about shining a light…I’m on your side, but don’t do this. You were going to do what exactly with the $40 million you sued for if you got it? Buy a bat signal so the light would shine even brighter?
Who cares?
yeah thats odd to say a 40 million dollar lawsuit was JUST about “bringing things to light”
It’s incredibly important that these accusations are coming to light, but I think we should be clear-eyed about the difficulties of successfully bringing civil and especially criminal cases in circumstances like this. Sexual assault cases are always challenging, and probably always will be. It’s a crime that usually takes place in private, and the evidence of a crime (unlike a robbery or murder) is often also consistent with consensual, non-criminal conduct. Those challenges only grow when a case is not brought for decades — evidence is lost, witnesses forget, the lack of prompt reporting of the crime generates suspicion about the accuser.In many cases, having the accused be viewed as a scumbag is likely to be all the justice we get.
Kevin Spacey is friends with the Clintons and flew on Epstein’s plane with Bill Clinton. Now he gets away with murder and rape. Sick world.
eh, you support the Russian invasion of Ukraine and their gang rape of the women there. And your boy Trump is a danger to women everywhere.
Won’t somebody please think of the twinks?
Apparently, Spacey can’t think of anything else.
I blame all the homophobes! -Billy Whatshisnsme
Probably in the minority here but what Spacey is accused of doing to Rapp doesn’t seem that egregious at all. Its not like Spacey forced his cock down Rapp’s throat or something or even touched skin to skin. Seems like real quick drunken shenanigans to me.
As long as his career stays dead that’s fine. Keep shunning this pedo.
Not a lot of extant hard evidence of a few moments that occurred 35 years ago. I think it happened and that Rapp should have won, but hard to be too surprised by the result. The way we got there (by trying to and failing to smear Rapp) is what was surprising and pretty much guarantees Spacey will be stuck working with Emile Hirsch, Mel Gibson, and that lady who got canned from Star Wars in the “eternally straight-to-streaming” section…I hope he is ready for all the generals and CIA handlers he’s going to play. Maybe, like Gibson, he’ll try to punch down and testify against Harvey Weinstein to get some penance points lolAs everyone has pointed out: Anthony Rapp was Mark in RENT, has starred in several other shows on Broadway (as Charlie Brown in the Charlie Brown musical) and is the third main character or so on Star Trek: Discovery…and he’s a really good guy who doesn’t go around sexually assaulting people…who would envy Kevin Spacey? That’s like republicans saying that school teachers envy CEOs…they just don’t get it.