Tag: sexual assault

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Anthony Rapp: Kevin Spacey Made Sexual Advance Towards Me At Age 14

Kevin Spacey (L) Anthony Rapp (R)

Anthony Rapp, star of Broadway’s RENT and currently CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Discovery, has shared a decades-old story alleging actor Kevin Spacey once tried to seduce Rapp when he was 14 years old.

The two actors were both appearing on Broadway at the time, Spacey in Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Rapp in Precious Sons.

Spacey, 26 years old at the time, had met Rapp at several post-show celebrations as the awards season had begun and invited Rapp to a party at his home.

Rapp went to the party alone, but upon realizing no other people his age were in attendance, found himself alone watching TV in a bedroom.

Buzzfeed has the following account from Rapp:

At some point, Rapp said he turned to see Spacey standing at the bedroom door. And that’s when he first realized that everyone else had left the party. They were alone.

“My memory was that I thought, Oh, everybody’s gone. Well, yeah, I should probably go home,” Rapp said. Spacey, he recalled, “sort of stood in the doorway, kind of swaying. My impression when he came in the room was that he was drunk.” Rapp doesn’t remember Spacey saying anything to him. Instead, Rapp said, “He picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold. But I don’t, like, squirm away initially, because I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then he lays down on top of me.”

“He was trying to seduce me,” Rapp said. “I don’t know if I would have used that language. But I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually.”

Rapp recalled this all happening — Spacey appearing at the door, coming into the room, picking him up, and putting him on the bed — in one clumsy action, with Spacey landing at a slight angle on top of him. He said Spacey “was, like, pressing into me,” and that he remembers Spacey “tightening his arms.” But while he can’t recall exactly how long Spacey remained on top of him, Rapp said he was able to “squirm” away after a short period.

“It was a frozen moment,” Rapp said of the entire encounter, with a deep, exasperated sigh. “In terms of fight or flight or freeze, I tend to freeze.”

After pushing Spacey off him, Rapp remembered he was able to step into the bathroom and close the door. “I was like, ‘What is happening?’” he said. “I saw on the counter next to the sink a picture of him having his arm around a man. So I think on some level I was like, Oh. He’s gay. I guess. Then I opened the door, and I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to go home now.’ He followed me to the front door of the apartment, and as I opened the door to leave, he was leaning on the front door[frame]. And he was like, ‘Are you sure you wanna go?’ I said, ‘Yes, good night,’ and then I did leave.”

As he walked home, “My head was spinning,” Rapp said. “I have a memory of turning around and [thinking], What was that? What am I supposed to do with it? What does it mean?”

Rapp says in light of the recent sexual harassment allegations about producer Harvey Weinstein, he felt emboldened to speak up about his experience years ago.

Some hours later, Spacey responded to the allegation via Twitter wherein he said he didn’t recall the encounter but apologized to Rapp. In the same message, Spacey, who has long danced around gay rumors, picked this as the time to come out.

“But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior,” Spacey wrote.

“This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life. I know that there are other stories out there about me and that some have been fueled by the fact that I have been so protective of my privacy,” he continued. He also acknowledged for the first time publicly that “I now choose to live as a gay man.”

The Twitterverse found it beyond contempt that Spacey would attempt to conflate the story by coming out:

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Six Witnesses Come Forward Corroborating PEOPLE Reporter Allegation Of Trump Sexual Assault

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump

PEOPLE reporter Natasha Stoynoff, who came forward last week with her own story about sexual assault by Donald Trump during an interview session, has gotten back-up from colleagues and friends who are putting their own names out there in support of her story.

Here’s just an excerpt of the PEOPLE story today:

Six colleagues and close friends who corroborate former PEOPLE writer Natasha Stoynoff’s account of being attacked by Donald Trump in 2005 are now coming forward. Among them is a friend who was with Stoynoff when she ran into Melania Trump later in N.Y.C.

The wife of the Republican nominee denies meeting Stoynoff after the attack, but Stoynoff’s friend Liza Herz remembers being there during the chance meeting.

“They chatted in a friendly way,” Herz, who met Stoynoff in college, says. “And what struck me most was that Melania was carrying a child and wearing heels.”

Marina Grasic, who has known Stoynoff for more than 25 years, says she got a call from her friend the day after the attack. Stoynoff detailed everything about the attack, from Trump pushing her against a wall to the business mogul showing up at her massage appointment the following day, she says.

According to Grasic, her longtime friend was embarrassed and even thought of Trump’s then-pregnant wife when deciding not to come forward about the encounter.

“Natasha was also struggling about not hurting pregnant Melania if the story came out,” Grasic says. “Beyond just the attack, she was horrified by the vulgar circumstances under which she was attacked and propositioned to have an affair. She was there in a professional capacity, writing an article about their happy marriage, and after the incident Trump acted like nothing happened.

Stoynoff’s former journalism professor, Paul McLaughlin, says that the writer called him in tears looking for advice the very night of the harrowing encounter. However, he cautioned her to remain quiet in fear of how Trump may retaliate.

“She wasn’t sure what she should do,” McLaughlin recalls. “I advised her not to say anything, because I believed Trump would deny it and try to destroy her.”

Testimonials from four more colleagues at the link.

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Former THE APPRENTICE Contestant Alleges Sexual Assault By Donald Trump

Former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos

A former contestant from the NBC game show The Apprentice has come forward with allegations of sexual assault by Donald Trump.

I believe this is the 7th woman to come forward with such allegations. For the past few days, Trump has denied any sexual misconduct on his part, saying he didn’t even know who these women are.

It will be difficult to make the same claim since Summer Zervos as a contestant on the 5th season of The Apprentice.

From the L.A. Times:

Zervos said she contacted Trump in 2007 seeking a job. They met in New York and he took her phone number, she said. He called before he visited Los Angeles, dubbed Zervos his “O.C. angel” and proposed dinner, she said.

Zervos said she was summoned to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she expected to eat at a restaurant. Instead, she said, she was ushered to Trump’s bungalow.

Trump repeatedly tried to kiss her with an open mouth as she darted around the room trying to evade him, Zervos said. He also put his hand on her breast and thrust his genitals at her, she said.

“Dude, you’re tripping right now,” Zervos said she told Trump, as she sought to stop his advances. “Come on, man, get real.”

She said Trump asked her what she wanted, and that she replied she had come to eat dinner.

As they waited for room service, Zervos said, Trump told her that he didn’t think she had ever known love or been in love. Then she said he turned to business, questioning her as though she was on a job interview.

They shared a club sandwich, and Trump advised Zervos to default on her home mortgage, Zervos said, adding that they arranged to meet the next day at Trump’s golf course in Palos Verdes.

Zervos said she left the hotel stunned by Trump’s behavior, but decided to attend the meeting the following day after speaking with her father.

“I wondered if the sexual behavior was some kind of test and whether or not I had passed,” she said. “Obviously he still wanted to talk to me about a job even though I had turned his sexual advances down.”

Zervos went on to say she was eventually offered a position at half the salary she expected. When she continued to pursue employment with Trump, according to Zervos, he told her he couldn’t afford her as he was laying off thousands of employees.

Here’s the full press conference held today by Ms. Zervos with her lawyer, Gloria Allred.

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ANOTHER Woman Accuses Trump Of Sexual Assault

Kristin Anderson via screen capture

The Washington Post has interviewed yet another woman who alleges Republican White House hopeful Donald Trump touched her inappropriately at a nightclub in New York City back in the 1990s.

Kristin Anderson was deep in conversation with acquaintances at a crowded Manhattan nightspot and did not notice the figure to her right on a red velvet couch — until, she recalls, his fingers slid under her miniskirt, moved up her inner thigh, and touched her vagina through her underwear.

Anderson shoved the hand away, fled the couch and turned to take her first good look at the man who had touched her, she said.

She recognized him as Donald Trump: “He was so distinctive looking — with the hair and the eyebrows. I mean, nobody else has those eyebrows.”

At the time of the incident, which Anderson said took place in the early 1990s, she was in her early twenties, trying to make it as a model. She was paying the bills by working as a makeup artist and restaurant hostess. Trump was a big celebrity whose face was all over the tabloids and a regular presence on the New York club scene.

The episode, as Anderson described it, lasted no more than 30 seconds. Anderson said she and her companions were “very grossed out and weirded out” and thought, “Okay, Donald is gross. We all know he’s gross. Let’s just move on.”

Anderson did not seek out the Washington Post to tell her story. A reporter at the WaPo heard of the incident from a mutual friend and contacted Anderson.

Anderson, who says she’s neither a Trump nor Clinton supporter, says she needed to take a few days to think about coming forward considering the media scrutiny she knew would happen.

Over the years, she’s casually shared the story to friends in regard to how women get hit on by “creepy older guys.”

Several women have come forward recounting alleged sexual assault by Trump in the aftermath of the now infamous Access Hollywood video where Trump bragged to host Billy Bush about behavior that very closely mirrors the stories now coming to light.

Watch a very credible Kristin Anderson tell her story below.

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Michelle Obama Slams Trump: “This Is Not How Any President Should Behave”

First Lady Michelle Obama, campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this morning, took Republican Donald Trump to task regarding the recent revelations and accusations of sexual assault without naming him.

Via ABC News:

Stumping for Hillary Clinton today, first lady Michelle Obama said the revelations over the last week about Trump’s treatment of women have “shaken me to my core” and called on voters not to dismiss the incident as “just another day’s headlines.”

“Last week we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. I can’t believe I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women. I have to tell you that I — I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted,” Obama said at a Clinton campaign event at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester.

Growing emotional at times, the first lady urged Americans not to ignore Trump’s comments from a 2005 “Access Hollywood” interview.

“This is not something that we can ignore. It’s not something we can just sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season, because this was not just a lewd conversation,” she continued. “This wasn’t locker room banter.”

Watch her speech from a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire:

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Trump Spokesman: Plane Assault Couldn’t Have Happened Because “Seats In First-Class Have Fixed Armrests”

As Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson tries to assert that one of the now many accusations of sexual assault by Donald Trump couldn’t have happened on a plane ride in first class back in the 80s, the rest of the panel begins to lose their shit laughing.

From Mediaite:

The Atlantic‘s Peter Beinart broke into uncontrollable laughter upon hearing Donald Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson go into a convoluted explanation on CNN about how he couldn’t have sexually assaulted a woman on a plane in the 1980’s.

Beinart was keeping it all together until Pierson unexpectedly starting rattling off airplane facts. “We’re talking about the early 1980s, Don. Seriously, back then, you had planes, what, a DC 9, DC 10, an MD-80, a 707, and maybe an L011?” she said.

“But she said specifically this was to New York,” Pierson braved on as Beinart began to laugh uncontrollably. “And this is what’s important. We can ex out the LC 11 and the DC 10. Guess what? The first-class seats have fixed armrests!”

Check out fired Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s face. He’s got nothing.

It’s really come to this?

And by the way – you knew this was coming – folks are already posting pictures of first class seats from the 70s and 80s which show some designs allowed passengers to lift and lower the armrest.

But, Katrina, girl, keep yourself together. Only a few weeks left to cash the check while embarrassing yourself.

(h/t JoeMyGod)

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BOMBSHELL: People Magazine Reporter Alleges Sexual Assault By Donald Trump

As the Donald Trump campaign continues to do damage control by moving into “scorched earth” mode, a bombshell from People.com tonight.

A veteran reporter, Natasha Stoynoff, who covered Donald Trump for years has come forward with shocking allegations of a sexual assault committed on her in Trump’s Florida home back in December 2005.

Here’s just an excerpt of the article posted tonight on People:

Our photo team shot the Trumps on the lush grounds of their Florida estate, and I interviewed them about how happy their first year of marriage had been. When we took a break for the then very-pregnant Melania to go upstairs and change wardrobe for more photos, Donald wanted to show me around the mansion. There was one “tremendous” room in particular, he said, that I just had to see.

We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat.

Now, I’m a tall, strapping girl who grew up wrestling two giant brothers. I even once sparred with Mike Tyson. It takes a lot to push me. But Trump is much bigger—a looming figure—and he was fast, taking me by surprise, and throwing me off balance. I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself.

The butler informed us that Melania would be down momentarily, and it was time to resume the interview.

I was still in shock, and remained speechless as we both followed him to an outdoor patio overlooking the grounds. In those few minutes alone with Trump, my self-esteem crashed to zero. How could the actions of one man make me feel so utterly violated?

It’s important to note that even as Trump followers denounce the allegations from Stoynoff, the behavior Trump himself described (and captured by Access Hollywood microphones) is exactly what is chronicled here. This is exactly what he told Billy Bush he did to women.

I find it difficult to believe a veteran reporter for People of many years would be throwing away a career on baseless allegations.

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Trump On Sexual Assault In The Military: What Do You Expect When You Put Men & Women Together?

At last night’s “Commander In Chief” forum, Republican Donald Trump doubled down on his 2013 opinion that sexual assaults were on the rise in the military because “what did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”

From his 2013 tweet (see above): “26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”

When asked about the tweet last night, Trump replied that “I think that’s absolutely correct.”

Of course, one option might be for folks to act as civilized men and women.

You have to wonder if the Trumpster thinks we shouldn’t have coed universities? Maybe segregate office workers?