I’m troubled by one comment in your news story, “Spacey faces sex charge on Nantucket” (Page A1, Dec. 25). The article quotes Heather Unruh, mother of the man Kevin Spacey is accused of assaulting: “The victim, my son, was a star-struck, straight 18-year-old young man who had no idea that the famous actor was an alleged sexual predator or that he was about to become his next victim.”
Does she mean to imply that this incident would not have been so serious had her son been gay?
I came out in the late 1960s. In the ensuing years I would occasionally be sexually harassed by other men — both openly gay and closeted — usually because I was younger. During one horrendous experience in San Francisco nearly 40 years ago, I was systematically harassed and humiliated by two men at a picnic, my pants pulled down, and I was nearly raped.
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Witnessing Spacey’s bizarre behavior rekindles the rage that I felt toward that pair of sexual predators — an anger scarcely mitigated by the fact that both are long dead.
Sexual assault is a serious offense — irrespective of the sexual orientation of either the perpetrator or the victim.
John Kyper
Roxbury