Kevin Spacey Accused of Sexual Battery by Massage Therapist - Vanity Fair

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Kevin Spacey, who was written off of House of Cards and has effectively disappeared from the entertainment scene in the wake of his reckoning with the #MeToo movement, is back in the headlines. On Thursday, an anonymous massage therapist sued Spacey for allegations of sexual battery, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and false imprisonment after an incident in October 2016. The documents, which were filed in Los Angeles on Thursday, detail an incident of alleged sexual misconduct.

In the complaint, the massage therapist says he was hired by a “male on behalf of Mr. Spacey.” When the therapist arrived at Spacey’s Malibu residence, Spacey directed him to a room upstairs, where he set up the table. After changing, Spacey returned to the room and told the massage therapist that he was having some “pain or discomfort in his groin area.” According to the complaint, Spacey then laid facing up, despite being instructed to lay facing down, and when the therapist was massaging Spacey’s leg, the actor “grabbed” his hand and forced him to massage his scrotum and testicles.


The therapist says he stepped back and said, “What are you doing? I am a professional. This is what I do for a living. I have a son.” He says Spacey continued to pursue him, grabbed his genitals over his clothes, and said, “Just let me give you a blow job!” The therapist said he told Spacey, “This is over. Just let me go.” Once Spacey finally let the therapist leave, the man says he took his massage table and fled the residence. (Representatives for Spacey did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The lawsuit is the most recent legal headache for Spacey since the actor was first accused by a series of men of sexual harassment, assault, and unwanted advances. (Spacey has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.) Late last October, actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of sexual misconduct in a lengthy BuzzFeed report. Rapp said that in 1986, when he was 14, Spacey, then 26, invited Rapp over to his house for a party, where he placed him on his bed and “made a sexual advance.” Spacey released an apology on Twitter last October following Rapp’s allegations, adding that he did not remember the encounter.

The allegations, which came at the height of the backlash against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, led to an outpouring of similar claims, effectively ending Spacey’s career. In November 2017, Spacey was digitally removed from the then-upcoming movie All the Money in the World and was replaced by actor Christopher Plummer, who received an Academy Award nomination for the role. For many of the men who claim they were victims of Spacey’s, however, the trauma lingers. “My stomach churns,” Rapp told BuzzFeed at the time. “I still to this day can’t wrap my head around so many aspects of it. It’s just deeply confusing to me.”

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