Accuser dies, so Kevin won’t face sex rap
Kevin Spacey won’t face criminal charges over allegations he sexually assaulted a recently deceased masseur in October 2016, Los Angeles prosecutors confirmed Tuesday.
“The victim, a masseur, alleged that he was sexually assaulted by the suspect while he was providing massage services at a residence in Malibu,” a charge declination worksheet obtained by the Daily News said.
“During the course of the investigation, the victim passed away. The sexual assault allegations cannot be proved without the participation of the victim. Thus, the case was declined,” the paperwork released Tuesday by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said.
Spacey’s criminal lawyer Alan Jackson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The News.
The masseur was pursuing a sexual battery lawsuit against Spacey (inset), 60, in Los Angeles Federal Court when he died “recently,” Spacey’s lawyer previously told The News. The death was made public in a court filing by Spacey’s camp.
A lawyer for the John Doe masseur slammed the actor for publicly announcing the death, accusing Spacey’s side of trying to gain a legal advantage through an “undignified, insensitive and inappropriate public filing.”
“It is true that Mr. Doe recently died. His untimely death was, to his family, a devastating shock that they are struggling to process and is so recent that they have not yet held his funeral service,” lawyer Genie Harrison told The News.
The massage therapist filed his lawsuit last year, alleging the “House of Cards” actor hired him for an October 2016 appointment at a private residence in Malibu and then grabbed his hand and pulled it toward his crotch to force a sex act.
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg faced withering questions from senators Tuesday about two crashes of 737 MAX jets and whether the company concealed information about a critical flight system.
“We have made mistakes, and we got some things wrong,” Muilenburg conceded.
Some members of the Senate Commerce Committee cut Muilenburg off when they believed he was failing to answer their questions about a key flightcontrol system implicated in both crashes.
Boeing successfully lobbied regulators to keep any explanation of the system, called MCAS, from pilot manuals and training. After the crashes, the company tried to blame the pilots, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
“Those pilots never had a chance,” Blumenthal said. Passengers “never had a chance. They were in flying coffins as a result of Boeing deciding that it was going to conceal MCAS from the pilots.”
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said Boeing “set those pilots up for failure” by not telling them how the response to a nose-down command on the MAX differed from previous 737s.
“Boeing has not told the whole truth to this committee and to the families and to the people looking at this … and these families are suffering because of it,” a visibly angry Duckworth said as she pointed to relatives of passengers who died.
The CEO told senators Tuesday that Boeing has always trained pilots to respond to the same effect caused by an MCAS failure — a condition called runaway trim — which can be caused by other problems.
Muilenburg and Boeing’s chief engineer for commercial airplanes, John Hamilton, spent about 80 minutes at the witness table. The committee then heard from two safety officials who helped shape reports about the Boeing plane.
The hearing took place exactly a year after a 737 MAX crashed off the coast of Indonesia and more than seven months after a second crash in Ethiopia. In all, 346 people died. Muilenburg’s testimony was the first by a Boeing executive since the crashes. The CEO is scheduled to testify before a House committee Wednesday.
Indonesian investigators say Boeing’s design of MCAS contributed to the crash of a Lion Air MAX last October. Ethiopian authorities are continuing to investigate the second crash, involving a plane flown by Ethiopian Airlines, which led to a worldwide grounding of the plane.
Chicago-based Boeing hopes to win Federal Aviation Administration approval by year end to return the plane to flight. The FAA is also coming under scrutiny for relying on Boeing employees to perform some certification tests and inspections. It’s an approach FAA has followed for many years.
Sen. Ron Johnson (RWis.) asked why Boeing didn’t ground the plane immediately after the first accident, when it knew that MCAS was involved. Why did it take another crash?
“We have asked that question over and over,” Muilenburg said. “If we knew everything back then that we know now, we would have made a different decision.”