Anthony Rapp

This morning in a London court, a jury handed down a verdict. The actor Kevin Spacey stood accused of nine counts of sexual assault, which had sparked up in the aftermath of #MeToo; six years later, the jury acquitted him of all of them. Though he had remained stoic during the trial, he cried as the final “not guilty” was read aloud. The two-time Oscar winner, star of House of Cards and American Beauty, former artistic director of the famous Old Vic theater and reluctantly outed gay man was free. He turned sixty-four years old today.   To some, this is a massive miscarriage of justice.

An antihero, an allegation, a court case, a neo-Nazi. The Kevin Spacey trial has been a hell of a ride and it's barely begun. This week, Spacey has taken the stand as the first witness in his own defense in his sexual misconduct trial, brought forward by actor Anthony Rapp. Best known for his role in Star Trek: Discovery, Rapp claims that in 1986, Spacey, who was twenty-six at the time, invited Rapp, then fourteen, to his New York home. He alleges that Spacey picked him up, laid him down on his bed, grabbed his buttocks and pressed his groin into his body without his consent. Rapp first made his allegation in October 2017. In the eyes of the public, Spacey went from antihero to villain.