【UK】

Harry Dreyfuss,UK the son of Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, has come forward with new allegations of sexual misconduct against Kevin Spacey. He claims that Spacey groped him in 2008, at age 18, while his father, unaware, was in the room with them.

"I ... see how important it is to add my voice to the people who are demanding a better world. A world in which powerful men are no longer allowed to feel safe to do this, or far worse," the younger Dreyfuss wrote in a guest post for Buzzfeed.

"I don't know how long we sat there like that. It could have been as little as 20 seconds, or it could have been five minutes. It’s the hardest part of the story for me to recall. What I do remember is that, other than being a shy kid who obviously admired Kevin Spacey a lot, I never once gave him a signal that I would want to be with him in that way."

The two Dreyfuss' were at Spacey's London flat for a private rehearsal session when the alleged incident happened. In Harry's telling, Spacey's subtle hints transformed into overt -- and inappropriate -- touching over the course of an evening. The worst of it came when the older actor cornered Harry on a couch and placed his hand on the younger man's thigh.

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. Suddenly, he had completed his journey and now he had all of me in his hand. I stopped reading the script and my eyes went wide. I lifted up my head and faced him. Looking into his eyes, I gave the most meager shake of my head that I could manage. I was trying to warn him without alerting my dad, who still had his eyes glued to the page. I thought I was protecting everyone. I was protecting my dad’s career. I was protecting Kevin, who my dad surely would have tried to punch. I was protecting myself, because I thought one day I’d want to work with this man. Kevin had no reaction and kept his hand there. My eyes went back to the script and I kept reading.

In the years after the his encounter with Spacey, Harry admits to having treated it as a joke. He didn't tell his father until several years later, but he did share the story among friends, giving it a light-hearted spin.

"For the last nine years, whenever I would tell this story to people who refused to laugh — who insisted that I had gone through something profoundly wrong — I would always try to downplay it so they could just see the funny side," Harry wrote. "I especially wanted to discourage them from thinking that what happened to me was something I ever needed to speak publicly about."

He only came to realize recently, with the recent spate of sexual assault victims stepping forward and naming names all throughout Hollywood and beyond, that a moment he'd always framed in his head as a "relatively minor" offense was, in fact, something much worse.

"There is no such thing as a “minor” assault," Harry wrote. "And if telling this story will help others speak up, then it is worth it."

Spacey has been dealing with a mounting pile of sexual misconduct allegations for the past week. It started with a story shared by Star Trek: Discovery star Anthony Rapp, who claims Spacey made a "sexual advance" when the younger actor was just 14.

In response, Spacey issued a public statement in which he claimed to not remember the incident. He also used the same statement to come out as gay, a decision that has prompted considerable backlash.

As many have pointed out, Spacey not only seemed to use the revelation of his sexuality to shield himself from Rapp's story, he also inflicted harm upon the gay community he's ostensibly ready to openly join because of the way his statement links homosexuality and pedophilia.

In the days that followed, Spacey retreated to seek "evaluation and treatment," while new allegations continued to surface -- including some from the set of House of Cards, the hit Netflix series starring Spacey. Production was temporarily halted and then, days later, Spacey was suspended from the show as Netflix has moved to sever all ties with him.

I strongly urge you -- especially the men in our audience -- to go and read Harry's full account. I've attempted to summarize the basics here, but there's a lot of eye-opening nuance to the story that you'll only pick up on, and more importantly learnfrom by reading the whole thing.