Prosecutors have dropped an indecent assault and battery case against Kevin Spacey, according to a document filed Wednesday with the Nantucket District Court. The Oscar-winning actor, 59, was accused last year of groping a young man at a Massachusetts restaurant and bar in 2016.
Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe cited the “unavailability of the complaining witness” as the reason for abandoning the case. The news comes nearly two weeks after the accuser dropped a civil lawsuit against Spacey that he had filed in late June, seeking damages for “mental distress and emotional injuries.” The Associated Press reported that the suit was dismissed “with prejudice,” so it cannot be refiled.
“My client and his family have shown an enormous amount of courage under difficult circumstances,” the accuser’s lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian, said in a statement Wednesday. Representatives for Spacey have not returned The Washington Post’s request for comment.
Spacey, who denies groping the man, had been charged in December — marking the first criminal case brought against the actor, who has faced multiple sexual assault allegations since the resurgence of the #MeToo movement. The accuser’s mother, former TV news anchor Heather Unruh, first spoke out about the alleged assault at a news conference in November 2017. She said Spacey got her 18-year-old son drunk at a crowded restaurant and grabbed his genitals, even as the younger man tried to shift his body away. (Court documents state that her son, who worked at the restaurant, told Spacey he was 23.)
According to the AP, the accuser was called to the stand earlier this month after saying he had lost the cellphone he used on the night in question. Spacey’s lawyers believe the phone contains text messages that would support the actor’s innocence. While the accuser denied deleting texts or manipulating screenshots on the phone he previously provided to investigators, the AP reported, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination after the defense asked him whether he knew tampering with evidence is a crime.
The mother of the young man who alleges that actor Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted him at a Nantucket bar deleted text messages from her son’s cellphone related to his “frat boy activities” before giving it to police in November 2017, according to a document read in court Monday.
During a pretrial hearing in Nantucket District Court — at which Spacey made an unexpected appearance — defense attorney Alan Jackson read from a state trooper’s three-sentence report that had just been turned over to him.
“Heather Unruh informed the investigator she had gone through his phone to remove anything related to (her son’s) frat boy activities,” Jackson said, reading from the report.
“Are you kidding?” Jackson said. “Heather Unruh took it upon herself to physically remove exculpatory information from the phone before she handed it to the government — and the government never told us.”
"The more you're wounded the greater you are," declared Kevin Spacey to guests at Rome's Palazzo Massimo alle Terme museum on Friday evening.
It was a pointed reading of the poem "The Boxer" -- about a bloodied fighter who rises against the odds -- from the actor who has faced multiple charges of sexual misconduct in recent years.
Spacey, dressed in a striking brown suit, stood beside the museum's bronze statue "Boxer at Rest," as he read the words from Italian poet Gabriele Tinti.
"They used me for their entertainment, fed on shoddy stuff," Spacey read from the poem.
He continued: "Fools! You couldn't imagine that I would be resuscitated in this metal suit, that I would come back to stare at you with my dark face, without lips."
The dramatic performance put "a smile on the face of the 150 attendants," said Tinti in a Twitter post, adding that it "brightened up the cloudy day in Rome."
The performance was part of Tinti's ongoing project composing poems inspired by ancient statues. He said he contacted Spacey about taking part, and the proposal "struck a note" with the actor's "sensitivity and deep love of art."
Marcello Barbanera, a professor and archeologist in attendance, told CNN that Spacey gave a "masterful" performance.
"As an archaeologist, I was a bit skeptical about this way of explaining art through poetry," Barbanera said. "But Kevin Spacey, as a great actor, performed a masterful reading, he gave the word to the statue. Like the boxer, Spacey also suffered strokes that remain in the body and soul."
Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy is heading to the Venice Film Festival and will screen in competition in early September. But there’s little chance the Rosemary’s Baby helmer will hit the red carpet in support.
That’s because the United States and Italy signed an extradition treaty in 1983 and Polanski, who was convicted of statutory rape in 1978, would be arrested and likely sent back to the U.S. if he steps foot on Italian soil. “If he puts his toe one inch over the line, he’ll be in jeopardy,” says attorney Joshua Dratel, an expert in extradition matters.
In 1978, when the arrest warrant was issued for Polanski, he moved to France, where he holds citizenship and is protected by the country’s limited extradition agreement with the U.S.
The Venice fest is a case of déjà vu for Polanski. In 2009, Swiss officials arrested him at the behest of U.S. authorities while Polanski was in the country to attend the Zurich Film Festival, where he was poised to receive a lifetime achievement award. That move sparked an outcry from a who’s-who of film world luminaries (Harvey Weinstein spearheaded a petition signed by everyone from Alfonso Cuaron to Natalie Portman to Tilda Swinton that read: “We demand the immediate release of Roman” and expressed “dismay” that “an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him.”
It is unlikely that any such petition would surface in the post-#MeToo era given that Polanski’s victim was 13 years old at the time of the rape. Venice organizers have already prepared for the physical absence of the director at the festival and are expecting Polanski to join its festivities via Skype. "Anyone who is wanted by the United States is risking his freedom by going anywhere in the world where they are not sure of a safe passage,” says Dratel.
The massage therapist who sued Kevin Spacey for sexual assault has died, according to court records.
Lawyers for Spacey filed a “notice of statement noting plaintiff’s death” in the federal case on Tuesday. They said they were informed on Sept. 11 that the masseur had “recently passed.”
“No further information or details have been given to Mr. Fowler’s counsel, but Plaintiff’s counsel stated they intended to notify the Court with additional information at an appropriate time in the future,” the filing said, referring to Spacey by his real name, Kevin Fowler.
The massage therapist, who filed his suit as an anonymous John Doe, had claimed he was attacked by the “American Beauty” actor two years ago during a massage session in Malibu.
Spacey, 60, allegedly twice grabbed the masseur’s hand and guided it to his private parts, the suit said. The Oscar winner was also accused of grabbing the alleged victim’s shoulders in an attempt to kiss him and trying to fondle his genitals.
Spacey also allegedly asked to perform a sex act on the massage therapist — causing him to bolt from the session.
