Richard Dreyfuss’ Son Alleges Kevin Spacey Groping Incident

Harry Dreyfuss, the son of legendary actor Richard Dreyfuss and an actor himself, claims Kevin Spacey groped him when he was 18 years old.

Dreyfuss came forward in an essay for BuzzFeed on Saturday. The site spoke with five people, including his father and brother Ben, to confirm the story. Academy Award winner Richard Dreyfuss said he was present at the time of the incident. Spacey’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, said, “Let me be clear, Mr. Spacey absolutely denies the allegations.”

At the time of the incident, Harry was a senior in high school and Spacey was directing Richard Dreyfuss in the play Complicit at the Old Vic in London. Harry wrote that he was visiting London during his Christmas break and they went to Spacey’s apartment.

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“It happened one night when the three of us were alone in Kevin’s apartment rehearsing my father’s lines,” Dreyfus wrote. “My father didn’t see, and I didn’t tell him about the incident for many years. Instead, I spent the next nine years telling people the story at parties for laughs.”

He tried to joke about the incident whenever he shared it, thinking he couldn’t consider himself a victim if he did. However, he stopped considering it a joke when he got to college.

When he shared his story with other members of the New York theater world, he met people with similar stories.

“The victims in many of these stories were often young men,” Dreyfuss wrote. “These admissions became so common that I started to plan on a break in the story just so people could nod and say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve heard this before.’ All of these responses made me realize there wasn’t anything funny about my story. It wasn’t a joke.”

After reading about other stories in the past week, since Anthony Rapp came forward on Oct. 29, Dreyfuss realized that Spacey is a “sexual predator,” adding, “But I still never thought talking about it seriously was ever an option.”

Dreyfuss considered what happened to him “relatively minor.” But after hearing those other stories, he realized his has “value.”

He was also disappointed by Spacey’s apology to Rapp, in which the House of Cards actor came out as gay.

“I also can’t stand that Kevin, in his apology, tried to distract from the real problem here by coming out, and in so doing managed to undermine all the work the LGBT community has done to do away with the association between pedophilia and homosexuality,” Harry wrote. “The fact that he’s gay is not what’s important. Rather, it’s that he has no respect for consent.”

When he first met Spacey in 2008, Dreyfuss was excited to meet the two-time Oscar-winner. He initially feared that Spacey would turn out to be like the characters he plays, but he turned out to be different at first. “All I remember thinking was you’re so nice,” Dreyfuss wrote.

A few days after their first meeting, they met at Spacey’s apartment. There, Spacey had him act a scene from Complicit with his father. Dreyfuss was excited for an opportunity to act in front of an idol. Spacey put his hand on Dreyfuss’ thigh and it stayed there for awhile. Later, he tried to send signals to Spacey to stay away from his thigh, but at one point he “slid his hand between my right hand and my right leg.”

“Over the course of about 20 seconds, centimeter by centimeter, Kevin crawled his hand from my thigh over toward my crotch. My mind went blank,” Dreyfuss wrote.

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Richard Dreyfuss confirmed to Buzzfeed that he didn’t see this and his son only told him years later. Dreyfuss wrote that he didn’t want to ruin his father’s career or create a feud between his father and Spacey.

“I love my son [Harry Dreyfuss] more than I could explain with all the words in the world,” Richard Dreyfuss tweeted. “And I am so incredibly proud of him right now.”

On Nov. 2, Spacey’s representatives said he is seeking “evaluation and treatment.”