Massachusetts prosecutors drop Kevin Spacey sex assault case

BOSTON — Massachusetts prosecutors on Wednesday dropped a criminal case accusing former House of Cards star Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting an 18-year-old man at a Nantucket bar in 2016 after the alleged victim refused to testify.

Prosecutors said they made the decision to drop the felony indecent assault and battery charge against the Oscar winner after the alleged victim invoked his right under the US Constitution against giving self-incriminating testimony.

Spacey’s lawyers had previously accused the man of deleting text messages that would support his defense. The man invoked his Fifth Amendment rights during a hearing earlier this month concerning the whereabouts of his cell phone, which was missing. A lawyer for Spacey, 59, did not respond to requests for comment.

Spacey, who has won two Oscars, including the best actor Academy Award in 2000 for his role in American Beauty, had pleaded not guilty to the charge. His lawyers had called the allegations “patently false.”

Mitchell Garabedian, the accuser’s lawyer, said in a statement that his client had “shown an enormous amount of courage under difficult circumstances.”

The allegations emerged after another actor accused Spacey of trying to seduce him three decades ago when he was 14, leading Netflix to drop Spacey from House of Cards, and to his scenes being edited out of the film All the Money in the World. — Reuters