Kevin Spacey: Prosecutors drop case claiming actor assaulted an 18-year-old at a bar

Prosecutors say alleged victim invoked right against self-incriminating testimony

Kevin Spacey attends his arraignment for sexual assault charges at Nantucket District Court on 7 January, 2019 in Nantucket, Massachusetts. (Nicole Harnishfeger-Pool/Getty Images)

Prosecutors have dropped the case accusing Kevin Spacey of allegedly groping a young man at a Nantucket bar in 2016.

The announcement came on Wednesday, more than a week after the accuser refused to testify about a missing cellphone the defence says contains information that supports the actor’s claims of innocence.

Spacey was charged with indecent assault and battery last year. He denies groping the man, whose mother first went public with the allegations in 2017.

Prosecutors in Massachusetts said they made the decision to drop the charge against the actor after the alleged victim invoked his right under the US Constitution against giving self-incriminating testimony.

Spacey has pleaded not guilty to the charge. His lawyers called the allegations against him “patently false”.

The actor’s accuser was ordered to take the stand earlier this month after he said he lost the cellphone he used the night of the alleged groping. The defence said it needed the phone to recover deleted text messages it says would help Spacey’s case.

The man denied deleting messages or manipulating screenshots of conversations he provided to investigators. But when he was pressed by the defence about whether he knew that altering evidence is a crime, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and the judge said his testimony would be stricken from the record.

The judge then questioned how prosecutors would be able to bring Spacey to trial if the accuser continued to refuse to testify, and prosecutors told the judge they needed time to decide how to proceed.

On Wednesday, Cape and Island District Attorney Michael O’Keefe said in court documents that they were dropping the charge “due to an unavailability of the complaining witness”.

The hearing at which the accuser testified came days after the man abruptly dropped a lawsuit he had just recently filed against the actor that sought damages for “severe and permanent mental distress and emotional injuries”. The suit was dismissed “with prejudice”, meaning it cannot be refiled.

The man did not receive a settlement to drop the civil case, his mother said. His lawyer said he dropped it because he was emotionally overwhelmed and wanted only “one roller coaster ride at a time” and so chose to focus on the criminal case.

The man’s mother, former Boston TV anchor Heather Unruh, alleged in 2017 that Spacey got her son drunk and sexually assaulted him at the Club Car, a bar on Nantucket where the teen worked as a busboy.

The man told police he went over to talk to Spacey after his shift because he wanted to get a picture with the former House of Cards star. He said that Spacey allegedly bought him several drinks and tried to persuade him to come home with him before unzipping the man’s pants and groping him for about three minutes.

Shortly after Spacey was charged, he posted a video on YouTube in the voice of his House of Cards character (who was killed off after the sexual misconduct allegations emerged), saying “I’m certainly not going to pay the price for the thing I didn’t do.”

Prosecutors had charged Spacey in the Nantucket case in December.

Additional reporting by agencies