Jury begins deliberations in Kevin Spacey sex abuse trial
on Thursday in one of the lawsuits that derailed the film star's career, finding he did not sexually abuse Anthony Rapp, then 14, while both were relatively unknown actors in Broadway plays in 1980s. The verdict in the civil trial came with lightning speed.
Jurors at a federal court in New York deliberated for a little more than an hour before deciding that Rapp hadn't proven his allegations. When the verdict was read, Spacey dropped his head. Then he hugged lawyers and others before leaving the courtroom. During the trial, Rapp had testified that Spacey invited him to his apartment for a party, then approached him in a bedroom after the other guests left. He said the actor, then 26, picked him up and briefly laid on top of him on a bed. Rapp testified that he wriggled away and fled as an inebriated Spacey asked if he was sure he wanted to leave. In his sometimes-tearful testimony, Spacey told the jury it never happened, and he never would have been attracted to someone who was 14.In his closing statements to the jury Thursday, Rapp's lawyer, Richard Steigman, accused Spacey of lying on the witness stand. “He lacks credibility,” Steigman said. “Sometimes the simple truth is the best. The simple truth is that this happened,” he said. Spacey's lawyer, Jennifer Keller, told jurors that Rapp made up the encounter and said they should rejectDuring her closing argument, she suggested reasons Rapp imagined the encounter with Spacey or made it up. It was possible, she said, that Rapp invented it based on his experience performing in “Precious Sons,” a play in which actor Ed Harris picks up Rapp’s character and lays on top of him, mistaking him briefly for his wife before discovering it is his son. She also suggested that Rapp later became jealous that Spacey became a megastar while Rapp had “smaller roles in small shows” after his breakthrough performance in Broadway’s “Rent.” “So here we are today and Mr. Rapp is getting more attention from this trial than he has in his entire acting life,” Keller said.
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