New accuser details ‘wordless’ sexual assault by Kevin Spacey
For years, Andy Holtzman had been sharing only with close friends his “strange” story about a scary encounter when Kevin Spacey groped him in the summer of 1981. For years he thought he was the only one with such a story. Not anymore.
“I had no idea I was far from alone,” Holtzman told USA TODAY. “It’s a good feeling and a bad feeling at the same time. It felt better for me (to finally talk about it) and not so good for so many others who had the same or similar experiences.”
Friday, Holtzman became the 15th man to accuse Spacey of sexually assaulting him in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY after he posted his story on his private Facebook page.
His story is similar in key ways to encounters described by other accusers, but Holtzman’s accusation is the earliest so far. It was July in New York, and Holtzman was 27, in his first major job out of college at the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theater, where he was running the fledgling film program. He was in his office one day, phone in hand, when Spacey walked in and sat down at an empty desk.
Holtzman knew who he was. Then 22, Spacey was an up-and-coming actor, playing a minor role in Henry IV Part 1, according to records.
“Within minutes, wordlessly, he was up and all over me,” Holtzman says. “The aggression was certainly more than a grope. When I was finally able to push him off and scream (at him), he theatrically stepped back, incredibly angry, grabbed his coat and bag, stormed out and slammed the door.”
Holtzman says he was shocked, then freaked out. Would Spacey get him fired? He kept fretting: What did I do, what signal did I send? And, “What the hell just happened to me?”
“It’s never happened before or since, where somebody physically forces himself on you in a wordless way. In my office, with a phone in my hand, during the day! It was so out of place, so sudden. It was the wordlessness of it — he never spoke to me throughout, not one word. I was saying things, he was saying nothing.”
(USA TODAY confirmed Holtzman was working at the festival’s theater that summer, with Spacey, via public records, biographies, news reports and other publications.)
Holtzman says he was more stunned by the encounter than traumatized. He was young, he was gay, he was comfortable with his sexuality, but he wasn’t interested in Spacey, then in the closet. He says he couldn’t fathom why Spacey would do such a thing to him and then react the way he did.
“It was the look on his face that was really shocking and then scary,” Holtzman says. “The anger was undeserved. If you ask for something and get a no, then I can understand the anger, but you ask for nothing and then try to take everything? Where is that anger coming from?”
As it happened, Spacey never retaliated against Holtzman, he says, and he avoided Spacey from then on. Holtzman, now 64, went on to a flourishing career in marketing and is now a freelance marketing consultant.
But the memory of the encounter lingered: Every time Spacey advanced in his career, such as winning two Oscars, Holtzman was reminded of it and would discuss it with friends. Memories flooded back after actor Anthony Rapp spoke out Oct. 29, accusing Spacey of making sexual advances in 1986 when he was 14.
USA TODAY reached out to Spacey’s representatives, lawyers Todd Rubenstein and Bryan Freedman, for a comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Holtzman says he doesn’t want to “gang up” on Spacey.
“I don’t wish him ill. I want him to get well. He needs help,” Holtzman says. “He’s a talented guy, but I can’t see how people can go and watch him (onscreen) without seeing Kevin Spacey ‘the sexual abuse guy.’ I don’t know how anyone gets over that.”
“It was so out of place, so sudden. ... He never spoke to me throughout, not one word. I was saying things, he was saying nothing.” Andy Holtzman describing an enounter in 1981