What's Next for Kevin Spacey? Perp Walk Awaits Him on Nantucket Next Month

By Maria Puente
USA TODAY
December 26, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2018/12/26/whats-next-kevin-spacey-perp-walk-awaits-him-nantucket/2415032002/

Kevin Spacey has probably walked the last red carpet of his Oscar-winning career, but next month he'll be doing a "perp walk" to a Massachusetts courthouse to face a sex-crime charge on Nantucket.

Spacey, 59, is due to be arraigned on Jan. 7 on a felony charge of indecent assault and battery in which he is accused of groping the then-18-year-old son of a Boston TV anchorwoman in a Nantucket restaurant bar in the summer of 2016.

Kevin Spacey Fowler (his real last name) will thus be forced to come out from wherever he's been hiding since October 2017, when a string of men began coming forward to publicly accuse him of various kinds of sexual misconduct dating back decades and crossing jurisdictions from London to Los Angeles.

Spacey is only one of dozens of prominent men in the entertainment and media industries who have lost jobs, careers, families and reputations after being credibly accused of sexual misconduct dating back decades and ranging from harassment to rape.

But so far only one other man has been charged with a sex crime: Former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will face trial in 2020 on five sex-crime charges involving two women in New York.

Now Spacey goes on the short list of those in criminal peril.

Under Massachusetts law, Spacey is required to show up for his arraignment, where he will be brought before a judge to hear the charges against him and enter a plea – all in an open courtroom.

The arraignment could last only minutes, but it will be the first time Spacey has been seen in public in more than a year. That doesn't count the surreptitious paparazzi shots of him at an Arizona sex-addiction rehab clinic where he fled in November 2017 after actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of trying to rape him when he was 14 in 1986.

It also doesn't count the baffling video Spacey posted on YouTube only hours after the sex charge became public Monday, entitled "Let Me Be Frank." In it, Spacey delivers a "House of Cards"-inspired monologue as his former character, Frank Underwood, questioning whether people should believe "the worst without evidence."

"Because I can promise you this: 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," he says toward the end.

And there may be another video involved in the case, according to The Boston Globe and online news service MassLive, quoting a report by Massachusetts State Police trooper Gerald Donovan, who investigated the case.

In his report, Donovan writes that the accuser told police he sent a three-minute phone video of Spacey allegedly touching the front of his pants to his girlfriend via Snapchat. The girlfriend confirmed she got a video, the report said.

The Globe also reported late Wednesday that both sides in the case now have copies of the video, even though Snapchat content is designed to disappear eventually. It allegedly shows someone’s hand touching another person’s shirt, but does not show anyone being groped, according to the Globe.

Meanwhile, Spacey's Monday video brought forth a surge of mocking, outraged tweets from celebs and non-celebs alike. "Creepy," pronounced actress Alyssa Milano, an outspoken activist in the #MeToo movement that hopes to put men accused of sexual misconduct in jail.

So what was the point? Is it Spacey speaking or Underwood? Given that Spacey has said nothing publicly since his first statement, in which he apologized to Rapp and also came out as gay, this may be all we have to go on until there is a trial. But if he didn't want to put out a straightforward denial of the charges, why bother with a video stunt?

"It's a real gamble. I think he may have been going for (the idea that) Underwood is diabolical but people still like him, he's the villain you can still root for," says former New York state prosecutor Adam Citron. "It could definitely hurt (Spacey) tremendously but by same token it may be that people will still like him."

Could the video be used against him by prosecutors at trial as some sort of admission of a past pattern of conduct? Maybe not; it's too vague to be an admission, Citron says.

"I think he's a very artistic person and he's venting," Citron says. "I do not think he’s doing this with the intent of later alleging insanity (as a defense)."

“Kevin Spacey was looking to play to the court of public opinion. I think he lost," says Ronn Torossian, an expert in crisis communications and CEO of a major PR firm, 5W Public Relations. "I think it was very weird and very odd. It's a bad mistake that I think will ultimately hurt him.”

Don't count on his lawyers to explain. At the arraignment, he will be represented by his latest defense attorney, Los Angeles lawyer Alan Jackson, plus a local lawyer named Juliane Balliro. Neither of them returned messages from USA TODAY, a pattern established last year by Spacey's first attorneys, Bryan Freedman and Todd Rubenstein, who have yet to talk publicly about anything regarding Spacey.

Former Boston news anchor Heather Unruh speaks at a press conference in November 2017 in Boston during which she accused actor Kevin Spacey of allegedly sexually abusing her son in July 2016 on Nantucket Island. (Photo: JOSEPH PREZIOSO/ AFP/Getty Images)

Police and prosecutors zipped up almost immediately after a former Boston TV anchorwoman, Heather Unruh, appeared at a teary press conference in November 2017 to accuse Spacey of assaulting her son by sticking his hand down the teen's pants while trying to get him drunk at the Club Car restaurant bar on Nantucket in July 2016.

For more than a year, Nantucket police, local prosecutors and Unruh's Boston attorney, Mitchell Garabedian, said nothing in response to queries from USA TODAY about the status of the case. (Garabedian is famous as a crusading lawyer, portrayed in the Oscar-winning film "Spotlight," about The Boston Globe's investigation of clergy sexual abuse in the Boston Catholic archdiocese.)

They were just as closemouthed Monday after Cape & Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe issued a statement confirming that Spacey had been charged. He did not say why it took more than a year after the allegation to do so. His spokeswoman, Assistant District Attorney Tara Miltimore, did not return messages from USA TODAY on Wednesday.

But O'Keefe told The Boston Globe that a probable-cause hearing was held behind closed doors on Dec. 20, after which Magistrate Ryan Kearney issued a criminal complaint for the charge against Spacey.

The Globe obtained an audio of the proceeding, reporting that it indicated how Spacey's lawyers plan to defend him, in part by raising doubts about the accuser's credibility. The teen, who had been drinking with Spacey even though he was underage and told Spacey he was 23, told police Spacey allegedly groped him for about three minutes, but he didn't move away or tell Spacey to stop.

“That’s an incredibly long time to have a strange man’s hands in your pants, correct?” Jackson asked the trooper. “I would agree with that. Yes,” Donovan replied, according to the Globe's report on the audio.

Citron, who is familiar with Massachusetts law, says the state allows prosecutors, police or accusers to seek a probable-cause hearing not open to the public (although the defendant or his lawyer can be present), to discuss evidence they have gathered and allow a magistrate, rather than the district attorney, to decide whether there is enough to proceed with a criminal charge.

"Because of the high profile of the case and who’s being charged, I think they went the route of getting a judge involved right away at a hearing on whether he should be charged, so the burden doesn't fall on either the police or the prosecutors in case it turns out (the charges) aren't true," Citron said.

Unruh said in a statement Monday to Boston media that she was "pleased" the case would be moving forward. Garabedian added his own statement, praising her son for showing "a tremendous amount of courage" in coming forward. "Let the facts be presented, the relevant law applied and a just and fair verdict rendered," he said.

During Spacey's arraignment, prosecutors will likely ask for bail, at which point Spacey's lawyer will argue for his release on his own recognizance or nominal bail, Citron says.

Weinstein, for instance, was released to his homes in New York and Connecticut on $1 million bail and an ankle monitor. Spacey is likely to be required to surrender his passport, too.

Kevin Spacey at the 2009 Laurence Olivier Awards in London March 2009. (Photo: DANIEL DEME/EPA-EFE)

If convicted of the charge, Spacey faces possible penalties of up to five years in prison or up to two and a half years in a jail or house of correction, and a requirement to register as a sex offender.

Meanwhile, Spacey also is still under investigation in Los Angeles by a Hollywood task force looking into allegations of sexual misconduct by entertainment figures. One accusation against Spacey – an adult man who accused Spacey of sexually assaulting him in West Hollywood in October 1992 – has already been declined for prosecution because it was too old to pursue under the relevant penal code at the time.

British police also are investigating multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against Spacey in and around London, some dating back to his time as artistic director at London’s Old Vic theater between 2004 and 2015.