Kevin Spacey was brought up by a Nazi father who raped his brother and brutalised his family so badly that they called him The Creature, his older brother exclusively told the DailyMail.com.
Now, as the Oscar-winning actor faces allegations of trying to seduce Star Trek's Antony Rapp when he was just 14 years old and of sexually assaulting a relative of former US news anchor Heather Unruh, the truth of his own troubled upbringing has been revealed.
Spacey's older brother Randall Fowler, 62, described the current allegations levelled at his brother as "disturbing" to DailyMail.com, as he acknowledged he had been made aware of them in the early hours of Monday morning.
Spacey, 58, claims not to recall the incident with Rapp, and has issued an apology of sorts for "what would have been inappropriate drunken behavior."
In a tweeted statement he went on to say that the story has encouraged him to "address other things" about his life, speaking openly for the first time about his homosexuality and choice to now live "as a gay man."
— Kevin Spacey (@KevinSpacey) October 30, 2017
Fowler has given some insight into what those "other things" might be, as he admitted he was sexually abused by their father for years and that his mother knew of the abuse.
Fowler is a Rod Stewart impersonator and limo driver in Boise, Idaho. His life is a world away from that of his famous brother from whom he is estranged.
But, according to Fowler, along with older sister Julie, he and the notoriously secretive star shared a brutal upbringing in a "house of horrors" dominated by their ultra right wing, perverted sadist of a father.
Thomas Geoffrey Fowler was such an abusive figure that, his oldest son admitted, he avoided having children of his own for fear that they would "inherit the sexual predator gene."
Fowler recounted that damage and the toll it took on him and his siblings in an interview with The Mail on Sunday shortly after Spacey - who was not then openly gay - was arrested in a park in London in the early hours of the morning in March 2004.
At the time of the interview, Fowler described his brother as an "empty vessel" who had never had a real relationship with anyone other than his mother.
He said: "Neither of us had a chance growing up with two such damaged parents. I went through three marriages and 40 affairs."
Their father, Thomas Geoffrey Fowler, joined the American Nazi Party when Spacey and his brother were just boys. He trimmed his moustache to resemble Adolf Hitler and he regularly whipped and raped his eldest son, Randall Fowler.
As a boy Spacey tried to placate his father while Fowler took the brunt of their father's sadistic abuse. Their elder sister, Julie, also endured beatings at her father's hands and ran away when she was 18 years old.
In his harrowing account Fowler recalled: "There was so much darkness in our home it was beyond belief. It was absolutely miserable."
He said: "Kevin tried to avoid what was going on by wrapping himself in an emotional bubble. He became very sly and smart.
"He was so determined to try to avoid the whippings that he just minded his Ps and Qs until there was nothing inside. He had no feelings."
Fowler spoke of a rootless childhood during which their father forced his family to move 10 times - from Colorado where he was born in 1956, to New Jersey where Spacey was born three years later and finally onto Los Angeles.
Wherever they were, he and his siblings were "trapped" he said.
Friends were not permitted in the Fowler household for fear that they would see the walls of Thomas Geoffrey Fowler's office, lined with pictures of naked men and women and pornography, according to Fowler.
Fowler was briefly a Scout but his white supremacist father made him quit when he discovered that the scoutmaster was Jewish, Fowler said. Spacey was never allowed to join.
In an eerily similar circumstances, Spacey's character Frank Underwood's father on House of Cards, also had ties with white supremacist groups, as the fictional father once went to a Ku Klux Klan meeting.
Fowler said that their mother, Kathleen was the breadwinner. She had a steady job as a secretary while her husband, a technical writer by trade, occasionally took freelance work.
According to Fowler, his mother was "disgusted" by his father by 1963 when it transpired that he was abusing a teenage girl who was a relative.
The family would be forced to sit through dinnertime rants as Fowler Sr lectured them on white supremacy, claimed that the Holocaust was a lie, that Jews ran banks and Hollywood, and that something called "biocrud" would destroy the planet.
He would stand behind Fowler with a riding whip, demanding that he read whatever diatribe he picked and beat him if he refused.
Finally, when Fowler was 12 years old, his father summoned him to his bedroom and said he was going to teach him about the birds and the bees.
Fowler said: "He unbuttoned my pants and started playing with me."
Horrified he yelled for his mother. Fowler said: "She came right up and pounded on the door but Dad had locked it and he told me to keep quiet.
"All of a sudden the pounding stopped. Mom had left. I'd never felt so abandoned. Dad started to perform a sex act on me. That was the beginning of my adolescence."
From there, for the next four years, the sex got rougher and the sessions got longer and more frequent, Fowler said.
Fowler responded to the abuse by rebelling. His sister ran away from home. Kevin, he recalled, "turned into himself" and tried not to get into trouble.
The actor would try to distract and "cheer everyone up" with his impersonations of famous people like Johnny Carson. Looking back, Fowler reflected at the time, acting was "maybe an escape" for his younger brother.
For his part, Fowler said: "I constantly threatened my father that if he ever touched my brother, I'd confront my mother with what was going on and that would destroy the family."
He "sacrificed" himself he said, for the sake of his little brother. Fowler added: "He and I were very close because we had so very few friends."
The only thing that kept Fowler from ending his life - although he once went as far as putting the barrel of a gun in his mouth - was the realisation that without him, there would be nobody there to protect his younger brother.
In later years their mother wrote a letter to all three children.
Fowler said that she did not attempt to apologise or even fully acknowledge what they had suffered at their father's hands.
Instead, he said, she "tried to justify" their father's behavior, saying that his own childhood was troubled and denied that by sharing his "political interests" he was trying to "foist" his beliefs on them.
In 1990 Fowler finally confronted his mother in front of both Spacey and their sister Julie. Their father had been rushed to the hospital and all of his children had assembled. Fowler recalled: 'Our mother just sat in stony silence.'
Ultimately Thomas Geoffrey Fowler died at the age of 68 having moved with his wife once more, to a suburb of Atlanta.
Spacey called his brother to let him know of his passing and their mother called Fowler on Christmas Day to tell him that he need not come to the funeral.
From then on Spacey's bond with his mother intensified, Fowler said, and their own relationship suffered.
When she died on March 19, 2003, Spacey had her cremated under a false name - Ruby Stevens - as he was adamant that the family keep the media in the dark.
Her ashes were divided into two star-shaped containers with a gold plaque bearing her favorite saying, "Everything will be fine."
Today, as Spacey faces two allegations of assault and admits there are more "stories" about him, the truth of that saying is about to be tested.
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