On Tuesday, September 4, 2018, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges against the 59-year-old American actor and former artistic director at London’s Old Vic, Kevin Spacey.
Mr. Spacey, a friend and traveling companion of Jeffrey Epstein, will not be prosecuted over a 1992 sexual assault charge because too much time has passed since the alleged sexual abuse incident took place.
American actor Anthony Rapp was the first man to come forward against Mr. Spacey. Mr. Rapp claimed he was 14, in 1986, when Spacey, 26, made an unsolicited sexual advance. Mr. Spacey is being investigated in the United Kingdom for six sexual assault claims over a period of 22 years.
The Guardian reported, “A man alleged the actor had assaulted him in West Hollywood in October 1992, but Los Angeles prosecutors said they could not take the case forward because any alleged sex crime involving an adult that occurred in that year would fall outside of California’s statute of limitations.”
Prosecutors are reviewing a second case involving the “House of Cards” and “American Beauty” star that includes allegations he attacked a man in Malibu in October 2016. The case remains under review.
Since the Harvey Weinstein case went public, Mr. Spacey has been accused by several men of sexual assault and misconduct.
According to The Guardian, “Spacey, artistic director at the Old Vic theatre in London between 2004 and 2015, has confronted a number of repercussions since allegations of sexual assault against him emerged. His film Billionaire Boys Club flopped, he was sacked from Netflix drama House of Cards and erased from Sir Ridley Scott’s ‘All the Money In The World.’”
In a similarly shocking case still pending, Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, co-founder of The Weinstein Company, has been charged with sexual assault and human trafficking.
Since Mr. Weinstein’s fall from grace in October 2017, as a result of Mr. Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker story, the most staggering indictments surfaced against the Hollywood Mogul including human trafficking criminal charges. British actress Kadian Noble claims she was a victim of sex trafficking by Mr. Weinstein.
There are over 22 million victims of human trafficking according to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Corruption UNODC.
Human trafficking is a crime committed by adult men and women in the United States and abroad.
In a typical human trafficking case a trafficker, usually an adult, lures or coerces an underage child (boy or girl) for sex. There is usually a promise of money, job or gift. The victim is locked up or in some way detained and forced to have sex for money.
Transportation across state lines or travel to another country is not necessary for a charge of human trafficking against a child to be brought against an individual.
Websites selling and exploiting children for sex online, such as Backpage.com, shut down and seized, in 2018, also facilitate human trafficking and the exploitation of children.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the law enforcement agency viewed over 25 million images of sexually exploited children online.
It is high time that Hollywood together with the government of the United States put an end to human trafficking and child sexual exploitation. It is an economic necessity and a moral imperative.
Conchita Sarnoff is the executive director of the Alliance to Rescue Victims of Trafficking. She is also a research professor at American University.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.