NEW YORK (AP) — Kevin Spacey testified Monday in a New York courtroom that he never sexually assaulted actor Anthony Rapp, who has sued, and claimed the Oscar-winner tried to bed him when he was 14 bring to.
The actor, who posed as “Kevin Spacey Fowler,” was questioned about Rapp’s claims that a then 26-year-old Spacey picked him up like a bridegroom would a bride and placed him on his bed after a 1986 party before lying down on it have him.
Rapp testified early in the trial that he struggled out from under Spacey in the fully clothed encounter before fleeing the apartment, only to have Spacey follow him to the door and ask him if he was sure he was going wool.
“They are not true,” Spacey said of the allegations.
He was then asked if he’d been private about his personal life throughout his career.
“I work in a very complicated family dynamic,” he said, saying his white supremacist and neo-Nazi father’s rants as a youth made him hate bigotry and intolerance.
Spacey said his father’s mind was probably damaged during unemployment, stemming from an unsuccessful quest to become a creative writer.
“My father was a white supremacist and neo-Nazi,” Spacey said. “It meant that my siblings and I were forced to spend hours listening to my father teach us about his faith.”
He said it was when “my hatred of bigotry and intolerance began”.
Spacey called it “humiliating and terrifying when friends came to his house” because he was never sure what his father would say to them or to him.
“I had to keep everything that happened in that house to myself. We never, ever talked about it. I’ve never spoken publicly about these things,” he said.
When Spacey first became interested in theater, he said he endured the screams of his father, who “used to yell at me because I thought I might be gay.”
Spacey’s testimony began two hours after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan dismissed an allegation of intentional infliction of emotional distress after Rapp’s attorneys concluded their argument. Kaplan said elements of the allegation duplicate Rapp’s claim that he was a victim of assault and assault.
Spacey’s attorney pleaded for the case to be dismissed, arguing that Rapp’s attorneys failed to prove his claims.
Kaplan said the trial could go ahead with personal injury and battery claims brought by Rapp, a 50-year-old regular on the television “Star Trek: Discovery.” He was part of the original Broadway cast of Rent.
Spacey, 63, was an Oscar-winning actor popular on the Netflix series House of Cards when claims by Rapp and others abruptly ended his career in 2017.
Rapp appeared on Broadway in 1986’s Precious Sons when he met Spacey.
Rapp testified several days earlier in the trial, which entered its third week on Monday.
The Associated Press typically doesn’t name people making allegations of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, as Rapp did.
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