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Sexual Battery Case Against Kevin Spacey Dropped After Accuser Dies
Kevin Spacey had been accused of sexual assault by a massage therapist.
Los Angeles prosecutors have officially decided not to pursue charges against actor Kevin Spacey in the wake of his accuser's death.
An unnamed massage therapist claimed in a lawsuit last year that Spacey repeatedly tried to kiss and touch him and forced him to touch his genitals during a private massage at the actor’s home years prior. Although the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office had been reviewing the matter since July 2018 — when the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department referred them to the case after the alleged victim reported it to them — prosecutors officially dropped the case on Monday, Variety reports.
The masseuse in question, known only as John Doe, died last month, and it was his passing that led to the decision, Christina Buckley, the head deputy of the district attorney’s sex crimes unit, said in a declination report, according to the outlet.
“During the course of the investigation, the victim passed away,” that report reads. “The sexual assault allegations cannot be proved without the participation of the victim. Thus, the case was declined.”
Attorneys representing John Doe filed court documents informing Spacey and his legal representatives that their client had “recently passed,” but did not elaborate on the circumstances surrounding his death, according to The Hollywood Reporter. However, an anonymous source reportedly told Variety that the accuser died from cancer.
Doe’s suit accused Spacey, 58, of sexual battery, gender violence and assault, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The alleged victim said that in Oct. 2016, he visited Spacey’s home in Malibu, California after being hired to give the actor a private massage; once there, he claimed, Spacey groped him multiple times, tried to kiss him, and forced him to touch his genitals.
Spacey also offered to perform oral sex on him, Doe alleged. Doe claimed he was eventually able to leave the residence, despite Spacey, at one point, allegedly blocking the door, which he’d previously locked, with his naked body.
Spacey denied the claims against him, and tried, unsuccessfully, to have Doe’s case against him dismissed, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The former “House of Cards” dodged a similar case in July; prosecutors in Massachusetts dropped a groping case after the accuser, a bus boy who claimed that Spacey sexually assaulted him at a bar in Nantucket in 2017, refused to testify.
