Kevin Spacey was considered one of the finest actors of his generation.
After a string of sexual assault allegations against Kevin Spacey, the former "House of Cards" actor now faces his first criminal charge, of indecent assault and battery.
The charge stems from an incident that allegedly took place in July 2016 between Spacey and a then-18-year-old employee of a Nantucket, Massachussets, restaurant, according to court documents. Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe wrote in a statement that an arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 7 at Nantucket District Court, as the Boston Globe first reported.
Heather Unruh, a former TV news anchor and the accuser's mother, told the Globe on Monday that she was "pleased that the case is moving forward in the judicial system." She previously spoke out about the alleged assault in an emotional news conference held in November 2017, about a week after actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of having made sexual advances toward him in 1986, when Spacey was 26 and Rapp was 14.
In that news conference, Unruh accused Spacey of providing her son with enough alcohol to get him drunk at a crowded restaurant called Club Car. (Her son says he told Spacey he was 23, according to court documents.) She said the actor grabbed the drunken teenager's genitals even though the younger man tried to shift his body away, an account the victim also shared with the Cape and Islands state police, according to court documents.
"The victim, my son, was a star-struck, straight, 18-year-old young man who had no idea that the famous actor was an alleged sexual predator or that he was about to become his next victim," Unruh said during the conference, according to the Globe. "This was a criminal act."
On Monday afternoon, Spacey tweeted a video titled "Let Me Be Frank," a reference to his character Frank Underwood from the Netflix series "House of Cards," which swiftly shut down production in November 2017 and then fired Spacey in response to Rapp's accusation. Spacey soon after faced a number of other sexual misconduct allegations, including Unruh's.
Spacey acts as Frank in the three-minute video and alludes to the politician character's dirty deeds in language that, though unconfirmed, could also be read as referring to the allegations against Spacey. Regardless, he says, viewers "want me back."
"You wouldn't believe the worst without evidence, would you? You wouldn't rush to judgments without facts, would you?" asks the actor. He later adds, "If I didn't pay the price for the things we both know I did do, I'm certainly not going to pay the price for the things I didn't do."
Spacey's legal representative has not returned The Washington Post's request for comment. Netflix declined to comment.
Separate sexual assault allegations against Spacey have been under investigation in London and Los Angeles, though no formal charges have been filed as a result. In September, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said prosecutors decided against filing charges in connection to an incident that allegedly took place in West Hollywood in 1992, though they would continue to look into an allegation received in August.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)