A man accusing Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey of sexually abusing him in the 1980s when he was 14 cannot proceed anonymously in court, a judge ruled Monday. US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in Manhattan refused to let the man proceed only as “C.D.” in a lawsuit filed in September in New York state court and later moved to federal court, per the AP. The man had met Spacey in the actor's suburban New York acting class before the alleged abuse, according to the lawsuit, which seeks over $40 million in damages. Kaplan said C.D.’s privacy interest does not outweigh the presumption of open judicial proceedings and the prejudice to Spacey's defense that would occur if he could proceed anonymously. Individuals with information that might support Spacey also would not know to come forward, the judge added.
C.D. since the 1990s had spoken to an unknown number of people about his claims against Spacey and had apparently cooperated for a New York magazine article in November 2017, Kaplan said. He said “the evidence suggests that C.D. knowingly and repeatedly took the risk that any of these individuals at one point or another would reveal his true identity.” Kaplan noted that C.D. also recruited for the lawsuit his co-plaintiff, Anthony Rapp, who has appeared in Rent on Broadway and in Star Trek: Discovery on television. The lawsuit said the older actor made a sexual advance to a teenage Rapp at a 1980s party. If C.D. drops his claims, he would not be the first to do so. Two years ago, a man who said Spacey groped him in a Nantucket bar in 2016 dropped his lawsuit.
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