Anthony Rapp (pictured November 2021) said he was 14 years old when Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted him at a party in 1986

"Mr Spacey will appear Thursday and throughout the trial. We look forward to his vindication by an impartial jury," his lawyer Jennifer Keller told AFP in an email.
If found guilty, Spacey faces significant damages.
Kaplan had dropped Rapp's initial charge of sexual assault, ruling it had been brought too late and was not covered by a New York state law on child protection, implemented in 2019.
However, the judge acknowledged that during the party in 1986, Spacey had fondled the 14-year-old boy's buttocks, lifted him onto a bed and laid partially on top of him while fully clothed.
- Other lawsuits -
During his testimony 35 years after the incident, Rapp agreed there had been "no kissing, no undressing, no reaching under clothes, and no sexualized statements or innuendo," during an incident that had lasted no more than two minutes.
Spacey has been hit by other charges in both the United States and Britain.
In August, a California judge ordered him to pay almost $31 million to the production company responsible for making the "House of Cards" series, from which he was fired when accusations of sexual harassment against him emerged.
In London, he is being prosecuted for sexual assault against three men between March 2005 and April 2013, when he was a theater director, and to which he pleaded not guilty last July.
And in Massachusetts, Spacey was charged with indecent assault and sexual assault on an 18-year-old bar worker in July 2016.

The charges were dropped in July 2019.