D.A. reviews Kevin Spacey accusation
Alleged 1992 sexual assault would fall outside California’s statute of limitations.
The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is reviewing a case of alleged sexual abuse involving Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey, officials said Wednesday.
“Yes. I can confirm our office did receive a case involving Kevin Spacey,” Greg Risling, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said in an email.
The investigation was referred to prosecutors April 5 by the L.A. County Sheriff ’s Department.
The department’s Special Victims Bureau began an investigation into allegations of a sexual assault involving Spacey on Dec 11, 2017, Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida said.
“The events were reported to have taken place in October of 1992 in West Hollywood involving a male adult,” she said.
The investigation was completed and presented to the district attorney’s office Entertainment Industry Sex Crimes Task Force for review and filing consideration.
Officials have declined to give specifics about the allegation against Spacey, but the date of the alleged incident would make it impossible to prosecute.
Any sex crime involving an adult that occurred in 1992 would fall outside California’s statute of limitations. Two years ago, state lawmakers enacted a law eliminating the 10-year statute of limitations for rape — the most serious of sex crimes — but that does not include offenses before 2016.
The case is the first police probe naming Spacey as a suspect in L.A. County.
LAPD Capt. Billy Hayes said Wednesday that his department does not have any investigations into Spacey.
Spacey, 58, the former artistic director of the Old Vic theater in London, already is the subject of multiple police investigations in Massachusetts and England.
He is the subject of at least three sex-crime investigations by London’s Metropolitan Police. The Old Vic said it has received 20 allegations of inappropriate behavior involving him.
Spacey also is facing criminal investigation in the U.S. after an 18-year-old reported that Spacey grabbed his genitals in a Nantucket, Mass., bar in 2016.
The two-time Oscar winner has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 15 men; the alleged incidents span his decades in film and on the stage. In October, actor Anthony Rapp alleged that in 1986, when Rapp was 14, Spacey made sexual advances toward him in a hotel room. Since then, several men have come forward to report incidents involving the actor.
After Rapp’s allegation, Spacey issued a statement saying he did not remember the incident but apologized for “deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.”
As the number of alleged incidents escalated, Netflix cut Spacey from his lead role in the award-winning series “House of Cards.” Ridley Scott also edited out Spacey from his lead role in “All the Money in the World,” reshooting parts of the film with Christopher Plummer as John Paul Getty Sr.
Amid the wave of accusations, Spacey admitted himself to a sexual treatment facility in Arizona.