Spacey, who pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges of felony indecent assault and battery for allegedly groping the then-18-year-old son of former Boston news anchor Heather Unruh at a Nantucket bar, said through his lawyers that the flirtation was consensual.
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“He welcomed drinks from [Spacey], let [Spacey] put his arm around him near the piano while they did ‘sing-alongs,’ and even left the bar with him to smoke a cigarette after giving [Spacey] his phone number,” Spacey’s lawyers wrote in court documents filed Monday, noting that “this describes two people engaged in mutual and consensual flirtation, nothing more.”
Spacey’s lawyers countered that the man’s actions during and after the “alleged touching” are “completely inconsistent with a victim of sexual assault.”
“He did not object to the alleged touching, he did not ask [Spacey] to stop, and he did not in any way remove himself from the situation,” Spacey’s attorneys wrote.
They noted that the teen lied about being 23 years old and even continued to text and Snapchat his girlfriend during the alleged assault — including sending one video that prosecutors are using as evidence of the actor touching him, which the accuser’s girlfriend described as showing the House of Cards star “touching the front of [his] pants by the crotch.” Spacey’s lawyers dismissed the video as a “fraction-of-a-second” video that “does not show anything that could be remotely described as assaultive behaviour.”
In 2017, the American actor faced numerous sexual misconduct claims in the US and abroad that jeopardised his career. Actor Anthony Rapp said that Spacey made a sexual advance on him in 1986 when he was 14 years old. Spacey, in turn, said that he had no memory of the incident.
On November 16, 2017, The Old Vic theatre disclosed details regarding previous allegations of inappropriate behaviour made by 20 men during his time there as artistic director from 2004 to 2015.