BOSTON (CBSLA) – Embattled actor Kevin Spacey has been charged with sexually assaulting a teen at a bar in Nantucket, Mass., back in 2016.
According to a report Monday in the Boston Globe, Spacey has been charged with felony indecent assault and battery over allegations he sexually assaulted a then 18-year-old man at a Nantucket restaurant in July of 2016.
In an emotional press conference back in November of 2017, Heather Unruh, a former news anchor, alleged that Spacey had grabbed her then 18-year-old son’s genitals at the Club Car Restaurant. Unruh said Spacey bought her son “drink after drink” and then stuck his hand down the teen’s pants and grabbed his genitals.
She said her son didn’t initially report the incident to police at the time because of “embarrassment and fear”, adding that “women who have come forward in the [Harvey] Weinstein case have paved the way” for her son and other alleged victims to speak out.
According to Unruh, her son reported the incident to Nantucket police in the fall of 2017.
Spacey is due to be arraigned in Nantucket District Court on Jan. 7, the Globe reports. On Dec. 20, a clerk magistrate issued a criminal complaint against Spacey following a show-cause hearing.
This comes as Spacey made his first public statements since the sexual assault allegations against him surfaced, in the form of a bizarre video posted Monday morning to his YouTube channel. In the video, he addresses the public as his character from the Netflix series “House of Cards,” Francis Underwood. In the video, Spacey speaks to the camera while wearing an apron and cooking in a kitchen.
“Oh sure, they may have tried to separate us, but what we have is too strong, too powerful,” Spacey says. “After all, we shared everything, you and I. I told you my deepest, darkest secrets. I showed you exactly what people are capable of. I shocked you with my honestly, but mostly I challenged you and made you think. And you trusted me, even though you knew you shouldn’t. So we’re not done, no matter what anyone says. And besides, I know what you want. You want me back.”
Spacey has also been facing investigations over multiple allegations of sexual assault in in New York, Los Angeles and London.
The slew of allegations began in October 2017, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, when actor Anthony Rapp claimed that Spacey had made sexual advances towards him in 1986, when Rapp was 14.
In response, Spacey said he was “beyond horrified”, adding that he doesn’t remember the encounter. In the same statement, Spacey came out as gay, leading to a flood of criticism against the actor.
“I choose now to live as a gay man,” Spacey wrote.
Following Rapp’s claim, several allegations poured in against Spacey, prompting Netflix to kick him off his hit show “House of Cards.”
Actor Harry Dreyfuss, the son of Richard Dreyfuss, said he was groped by Spacey in 2008 in Spacey’s apartment.
In November 2017, London’s Old Vic Theater, where Spacey had served as artistic director from 2004 to 2015, announced that it had received 20 allegations of inappropriate behavior against him.
In an extraordinary move, Spacey was pulled from the Ridley Scott movie “All the Money in the World” after it had finished filming. Spacey, who played billionaire J. Paul Getty in the film, was replaced by veteran actor Christopher Plummer. In the span of a few weeks, Scott reshot all Spacey’s scenes with Plummer, and had the film finished and edited in time for its Dec. 22, 2017, release.
In September, L.A. County prosecutors declined to file charges against Spacey for an alleged assault that occurred in West Hollywood in 1992 because the case was beyond the statute of limitations, prosecutors said.
Source: “Los Angeles” – Google News