During Friday’s opening statements of Kevin Spacey’s criminal trial, prosecutors portrayed him as a “sexual bully.”
The 63-year-old actor has pleaded not guilty to sexual assault, indecent assault, and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent.
The charges derived from four separate men’s allegations.
In her opening statement, prosecutor Christine Agnew described Spacey as “a man who does not respect personal boundaries or space, a man who seems to take pleasure in making others feel powerless and uncomfortable — a sexual bully.” It appears that his preferred manner of assault is aggressively groping other men in the crotch.
Patrick Gibbs, Spacey’s attorney, stated that the actor denied all allegations of nonconsensual conduct and instructed the jury to consider, as they listened to the evidence, what, if anything, had occurred while he was with the men. He suggested that the alleged victims had ulterior motives and that Spacey had made himself vulnerable to opportunists by coming out as homosexual in 2020.
He stated that jurors would be exposed to falsehoods, half-truths, intentional exaggerations, and “many damned lies.”
All allegations were made during Spacey’s tenure as artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre in London. The four unrelated victims of the “American Beauty” actor have similar accounts of being molested by him.
Spacey stated in his statement to police that he had not acted without consent. He acknowledged that it was “entirely possible and likely” that he had made a “clumsy pass,” but denied grabbing anyone’s crotch. He implied that some of the males were interested in financial gain.
During the four-week trial at Southwark Crown Court, where he is identified by his complete name, Kevin Spacey Fowler, a jury of nine men and five women, plus two alternates, will determine his fate. The actor has residences in London and the United States and is out on bond.
Spacey was first accused of sexual misconduct in 2017, when actor Anthony Rapp came forward. In the 1980s, Rapp accused Spacey of assaulting him at a gathering. In Rapp’s civil case against Spacey, he was deemed not to be liable.
After Rapp’s accusation, additional men came forward with allegations against Spacey, and he was fired from the Netflix series “House of Cards.”
Spacey returned to the big screen with roles in “The Man Who Drew God” by Italian director Franco Nero, the biopic “Once Upon a Time in Croatia,” and “Peter Five Eight.”
The actor claims he would be in demand again if he were not charged in the United States.
“There are people ready to hire me as soon as I am cleared of these charges,” Spacey said in an interview with Germany’s Zeit magazine published this month.
