A court has heard testimony from a man who alleges that disgraced Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey abused him when he was 14 years old.
Actor Anthony Rapp told a New York City jury that Spacey tried to force himself onto him sexually when he was underage.
Rapp testified that he felt helpless when Spacey climbed on top of him in bed.
“I was frozen,” Anthony Rapp said on the second day of a civil trial in Manhattan.
“I was pinned underneath him.
“I didn’t know what to do.”
Rapp testified in a halting voice that then-26-year-old Spacey had invited the then-young teenager to a party at his Upper East Side apartment.
At the time, both actors were starring on Broadway in 1986.
He told the court that he wandered into a bedroom to watch TV and get away from the adults.
However, he says that an intoxicated-looking Spacey entered the room after the other guests had left the party.
Rapp said Spacey lifted him up and lay him down on the bed,
He then stated that Spacey climbed on top of the young teen and pressed the “full weight” of his chest and groin into him.
Rapp, now 50, said he was able to fight Spacey off him and found a way to slip away and flee the apartment.
As he tried to escape, Rapps says Spacey asked, “Are you sure you want to leave?”
Asked by his lawyer how he would respond to anyone who downplayed the severity of what happened, Rapp responded by describing himself as a frightened child trying to fend off a grown man.
“I’m grateful that that 14-year-old boy had the wherewithal to get away,” he added.
“I’d also say he shouldn’t have gone through that in the first place.”
As Rapp, sometimes taking deep breaths, testified, Spacey wrote notes on a pad or sat with his hands folded.
Rapp, himself a successful actor, came forward with the accusation in 2017.
He was the first of many others who came forward and largely shut down Spacey’s career with multiple claims of inappropriate touching or sexual advances.
At the time, Spacey was starring in Netflix’s political thriller “House of Cards.”
He’s also known for his role in the 1999 film “American Beauty,” which won him an Academy Award.
As a teenager, Rapp acted in films including “Adventures in Babysitting.”
He was later part of the original Broadway cast of “Rent” and is now a regular on the hit TV show “Star Trek: Discovery.”
The trial’s first witness, Andrew Holtzman, claimed Spacey made a similar move on him years earlier.
Holtzman, now 68, testified that he was working in his office at the New York Shakespeare Festival in the summer of 1981 when Spacey entered and sat at a spare desk used by actors and others who worked for the company of seven theaters.
Holtzman said Spacey didn’t say anything when he entered the office in a windbreaker, “tight blue jeans,” and carrying a leather shoulder bag, but he recalled knowing him because he’d seen his picture in the program for a play, “Henry IV,” in which Spacey was performing at the time.
As he finished a telephone call, Holtzman stood up at his desk and a sexually aroused Spacey walked over to him, lifted him up by the crotch, and put him on the desk, Holtzman recalled.
“What are you doing? Get off of me!” he said he told Spacey.
“I could feel his erection on my body,” Holtzman said.
After a few more minutes, Spacey got off him, grabbed his windbreaker and bag, and stormed from the office, Holtzman said.
Rapp is seeking $40 million in damages for the psychological injuries he says he sustained as a result of the encounter with Spacey.
He will return to the witness stand when the trial resumes on Tuesday.
