Anthony Rapp, Second Man Sue Kevin Spacey Over Alleged Assaults

Actor Anthony Rapp and another man, not identified by name, are suing Kevin Spacey, saying he sexually assaulted them while they were in their early teens.

Rapp, a gay actor who appears in Star Trek: Discovery and is known for the stage and film productions of Rent,came forward in 2017 to accuse Spacey of sexual assault. He said the assault occurred in 1986, when he was 14 and Spacey 26. During a party at Spacey's home in New York City, Rapp said, Spacey picked up the younger actor, put him down on a bed, and lay down on top of him. Rapp eventually squirmed away, he said. Spacey said he did not remember the incident, but if it indeed happened, he owed Rapp an apology for what would have been "deeply inappropriate drunken behavior." Spacey then came out as gay.

Since then, several other men have accused Spacey of assault, but the allegations by the second man involved in the suit are new, The New York Times reports. The suit says that in the 1980s, when this man was also about 14, he met Spacey in an acting class in Westchester County, N.Y. He went to Spacey's apartment numerous times and "engaged in sexual acts," according to the suit. On the final visit, he refused to have sex with Spacey, but Spacey assaulted him, the suit says.

The suit was filed Wednesday in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan. (In New York State, the Supreme Court is a trial court, not the state's highest court.) The filing was made possible by the Child Victims Act, a law enacted last year, which extended the statute of limitations for civil and criminal actions regarding sexual abuse of minors. Previously, such actions had to be brought before the accuser turned 23. Now civil suits can be brought until the accuser is 55 and criminal charges can be brought until the accuser is 28. Both Rapp and the other man are younger than 55 but past 28; Rapp is 48.

In the suit, they seek damages for severe emotional distress caused by Spacey's alleged actions. Peter Saghir, the lawyer for both men, told the Times the two men do not know each other. Jennifer L. Keller, Spacey's lawyer, declined comment to the Times regarding the suit.

There have been at least two other civil suits against Spacey, an Oscar winner for 1995's The Usual Suspects and 1999's American Beauty, but both have been dropped. He was sued in 2018 by a Malibu, Calif., massage therapist who said that during a session in 2016, Spacey attempted to kiss him and forced him to grab Spacey's genitals. The therapist died in 2019, and the suit was dropped.

A man who said Spacey had groped him at a bar in Nantucket, Mass., where the man was working as a busboy in 2016, filed both a civil suit and a criminal charge of sexual assault against the actor. Last year he dropped the civil suit due to emotional distress, he said, and prosecutors dropped the criminal charge because the man invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. He could have been charged with destroying evidence because of deletion of information from his cell phone. Spacey had pleaded not guilty to the criminal charge.

Spacey has denied all the other allegations as well but has seen his career implode since his various accusers came forward. He was edited out of the movieAll the Money in the World, for which new footage was shot with Christopher Plummer playing his role, and dropped from the final season of the hit Netflix series House of Cards.