A pre-trial hearing in the case of felony indecent assault and battery filed against actor Kevin Spacey took an unexpected turn Monday when the accuser invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege to remain silent on the witness stand.
Heather Unruh, a 51-year-old journalist and former TV anchorwoman from the Boston area, accused Spacey in 2017 of assaulting her son, William Little, in the previous year, claiming that the actor plied her then-18-year-old son with alcohol and molested him at a Nantucket resort bar where the teen worked as a busboy.
Criminal charges in the matter were formally filed in December 2018. Spacey pleaded not guilty in January and has also publicly denied groping the teen.
Little, now 21, filed a civil suit against Spacey last month, which claimed the alleged incident left him with “severe and permanent mental distress and emotional injuries.” He voluntarily dropped the lawsuit just a week later. Neither he nor his lawyer commented on the dismissal. The family has rejected the notion that a secret settlement was made in order to encourage them to drop the suit.
Spacey, 59, is a two-time Academy Award-winning actor whose career came to a crashing halt in 2017 after several allegations of sexual assault were made against him. Actor Anthony Rapp claimed Spacey molested him when he was just 14 years old. Spacey was not present in Monday’s hearing.
Nantucket District Court Judge Thomas Barrett gave Unruh, her husband Nick Little, and her son until today to turn over a mobile phone which is said to have text message evidence relating to the night of the alleged assault. The family was not able to produce the phone or explain its disappearance since it was inspected by police. The family claims that police and the prosecution never returned the phone to them, but police say they gave it back after approximately 20 days in custody.
Mitch Garabedian, attorney for the accuser, said today that his client had gone through several phones since the time of the alleged assault and did not believe that messages from the night in question had transferred to each new device.
Alan Jackson, Spacey’s attorney, called the misplaced cellphone and bungled chain of custody a “disaster.” Spacey’s defense team wants to examine the phone, which they believe will have evidence that proves their client’s innocence including video and texts. Spacey’s lawyers also believe that Unruh and her family tampered with the texts in question, deleting several messages that would show accusations to be false. Jackson has repeatedly stated his belief that Unruh and her son filed the charges hoping to receive a financial windfall from a high-profile celebrity.
In 20 minutes of questioning over the cellphone in a Nantucket court room Monday, the accuser said he has tried to recover certain texts from the night of the alleged incident but has been unable to do so. The defense pressed particularly hard on questions of whether the accuser had deleted messages and photos relating to the incident. Unable to give satisfactory answers, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment, which strikes his testimony from court records.
The accuser’s father took the stand next and was also unable to give any definitive answers about the missing phone or text messages, but the line of questioning left him sharply defensive and visibly annoyed. Judge Barrett warned him several times that he was close to being in contempt of court.
Unruh herself eventually took the stand, though there was some question about whether her testimony had been tainted. She was meant to be sequestered during her son’s testimony, but the court was alerted that she had been watching on TV, which would compromise any testimony she would give later. She claimed she didn’t hear most of her son’s testimony and was allowed to take the stand. She vigorously denied destroying the phone or deleting messages that would relate to the incident in question, but did admit to deleting messages from her son she deemed to be “rough” and sounding like they were from a “frat boy,” including some racist epithets and images of him using drugs.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for July 31 in Nantucket, when the defense is expected to move for dismissal.
