The media has written hundreds of stories about the sexual deviancy of Kevin Spacey, but there’s been a strange twist: he keeps getting acquitted. What’s going on?
The most damning story originated in Buzzfeed in 2017. In a bombshell article, reporter Adam Vary recounted how Spacey sexually assaulted actor Anthony Rapp, who was just 14 years old at the time.
Despite having occurred in 1986, Rapp’s claims were lurid and specific.
Anthony Rapp’s story: He recalled how Spacey had first taken him and a 17-year-old acting friend to dinner and clubbing. Then, days later Spacey invited Rapp to a party at his apartment. The young boy was so bored by the adult vibe that he went alone into the bedroom to watch TV.
Rapp said later in the evening, guests had gone and Spacey entered the bedroom. He first blocked the doorway, then tossed the boy onto the bed, laying across him in a sexual manner. Rapp says he wriggled out from under the 26-year-old Spacey and left the apartment. Ever since, he’s recoiled at the sight of Spacey – on screen or in person – and still suffers from PTSD.
At the height of the #MeToo movement, the story, along with other allegations swirling around Spacey, put the actor’s career on hiatus. Netflix shelved his Gore Vidal biopic and removed him from the last season of House of Cards. His scenes were cut from a movie about J. Paul Getty and reshot with another actor. His publicist and talent agency walked away, and Spacey hasn’t acted since.
Rapp then sued Spacey for $40 million in 2020, which was 34 years after the incident. Under legal scrutiny, his story unraveled.
The “star witness” turned out to be Spacey’s studio apartment, which had no separate bedroom where the young Rapp could have left the “party” to watch TV, and no door for Spacey to block.
Rapp first testified that he went only once to Spacey’s apartment, the night of the alleged assault, but his acting friend said both of them visited Spacey’s apartment on the night they went out.
Rapp had been acting in a Broadway play, where actor Ed Harris, playing Rapp’s father, mistakes the young boy for his wife in a darkened room, and climbs on the boy in a sexual way, somewhat similar to his accusations against Spacey.
Rapp said a particular #MeToo story had emboldened him to speak out, but that story was published after he had contacted Buzzfeed.
As it turns out, Buzzfeed wasn’t a neutral player in this story, and practiced unethical journalism. The Federalist has written a devastating takedown of their actions.
The Buzzfeed reporter, Adam Vary, had been friends with the accuser for nearly two decades. And as subpoenaed text messages would later show, he didn’t report on his friend’s accusations as much as work hand-in-hand to write a compelling narrative of Spacey as predator.
That 17-year-old friend was actually a young man of 19, and Buzzfeed neither checked his age nor contacted him for corroboration.
Rapp first told the reporter he had a traumatic reaction seeing Spacey at the 2008 Tony awards, but Buzzfeed couldn’t confirm Spacey was even there. Instead of questioning it, the reporter proposed a workaround by making things ambiguous, texting Rapp: “... but we don’t want to nail down a specific date that Spacey could then just flatly deny. We’re still looking, but if we can’t nail it down, we’ll likely say that you saw him at an industry event or some such.”
He offered a similar solution to the night of the alleged party, texting, “(Similarly … we’re also going to steer away from exact specificity in the story for the party.)”
Even the judge in the case blasted this too-cozy relationship, writing:
“What calls Vary’s independence into question is the messages to Rapp and other documents indicating Vary’s willingness to shape the story to Rapp’s objectives, to overlook or massage unverified details, or to directly advise Rapp on public relations strategy. These statements go far beyond a ‘point of view’ about the subject matter. In some instances, they come close to painting Vary as a commissioned agent.”
The jury acquitted Spacey in an hour. The Buzzfeed story is still online in its original form.
I don’t have a crystal ball to know how many, if any, of the accusations made against Spacey are true. I’m confident that he liked younger men, though not necessarily underage boys, and was aggressive in his sexual advances. As a rich, good looking, famous actor, that approach probably worked well for him.
But as the criminal and civil cases fall by the wayside, it’s a reminder that reality isn’t as black and white as a tweet or a headline. We've got to dig deeper, read between the lines, and remember that every story has more than one side.
— Ken
I can't speak to the journalistic angle here because I'm not familiar with the backstory, but here's another example of the problem with our culture's tendency to rush to judgment and see people in binary good/evil terms.
Kevin Spacey might be an angel (very unlikely), he might be a sleazeball, he might be a sleazeball who abused people we don't know about, and he might be a sleazeball who abused some or all of the people who accused him in these cases. But he went through the legal process and wasn't found guilty of wrongdoing, and that should count for a lot. On the other hand, when there's an avalanche of accusations against somebody, there's usually at least a kernel of truth there.
I don't expect creative types to be virtuous people, so I won't have trouble kicking back and watching a Kevin Spacey movie. Or even listening to a Michael Jackson or R Kelly song. I separate the artist from the art, which I realize is an old-fashioned approach nowadays.
I applaud you for taking on this story, but I would caution about declaring someone “not guilty” when we all know the connotation. I was heartened to at least see the acknowledgment of Spacey’s known predilection for young men, but in today’s environment where everyone looks for a victim label, I am hard pressed to hand one to Spacey, even in a legal sense, because of just how destructive his behavior, and so many like him, has been. I realize it sounds like I’m willing to make an example of him for the sake of deterring others like him from preying on young people....and I guess I am. That’s probably all that needs to be said about that.