Kevin Spacey denies sexual abuse charges in US court

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Disgraced movie star Kevin Spacey takes the stand at his trial in New York, rejecting as “false” allegations that he sexually assaulted fellow actor Anthony Rapp when he was a minor.

Rapp, who stars in the series “Star Trek: Discovery,” claims $40 million in damages against the two-time Oscar winner for “emotional distress” for what allegedly happened in 1986, when he was 14 and Spacey 26. .

Spacey said he did not recall attending a private party at a Manhattan apartment with Rapp, as the 50-year-old claims.

Before appearing in court Monday, Spacey, 63, won a small victory when the judge presiding over the case, Lewis Kaplan, dismissed Rapp’s claim that Spacey had intentionally caused him emotional distress.

In his lawsuit, Rapp accused Spacey of walking into a room where he was watching television during a party the two were attending, picking him up, pulling him onto a bed and lying next to him.

Addressing court earlier this month, Rapp said he “felt frozen” during the alleged incident, until he managed to “escaped”.

Since Rapp’s first accusations surfaced in 2017, at the height of the #MeToo movement against sexual abuse, Spacey has disappeared from screens and theaters.

During cross-examination Monday, Spacey described his own troubled family, with a father he described as a “white supremacist” and a “neo-Nazi,” something he had never said publicly before, and that he didn’t like homosexuals and didn’t he appreciated his son’s interest in the theater.

Spacey said Rapp’s allegations, published in a late 2017 Buzzfeed article, left him “shocked, scared and confused.”

On the recommendation of his advisers, he issued a public apology that he said he now regrets.

“I was encouraged to apologize and I learned a lesson, which is never to apologize for something you didn’t do,” he told the court.

At the time of the accusations, he came out publicly as gay for the first time, which he said led to accusations that he was “trying to change the subject or trying to deflect.”

Wiping away tears, the “American Beauty” and “House of Cards” star said she “would never have done anything to hurt the gay community.”

The “Usual Suspects” star also pleaded not guilty to sexual assault charges against three men between March 2005 and April 2013 in Britain, and in 2019 the sexual assault and sexual assault charges in Massachusetts were dropped.

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