LONDON — LONDON (AP) — Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey bought a thrill preying on different males and escalated his habits from touchy-feely advances to hostile fondling and worse, a prosecutor instructed jurors Friday throughout Spacey’s sexual assault trial in London.
Spacey is “a person who doesn’t respect private boundaries or area, a person who it could appear delights in making others really feel powerless and uncomfortable — a sexual bully,” prosecutor Christine Agnew mentioned in her opening assertion. “His most well-liked methodology of assault is, it seems, to seize aggressively different males within the crotch.”
Spacey, 63, has pleaded not responsible to a dozen fees involving 4 males and allegations that date from 2001 to 2013, when he labored at London’s Outdated Vic Theatre. The costs embody sexual assault, indecent assault and inflicting an individual to interact in penetrative sexual exercise with out consent.
The stakes for the American actor are excessive. A conviction may ship him to jail, whereas an acquittal may enable for a profession comeback.
Protection lawyer Patrick Gibbs mentioned Spacey denied all allegations of nonconsensual exercise and instructed jurors to ask themselves as they listened to the proof what — if something — had occurred when he was with the boys. He urged the alleged victims had different motives and mentioned that Spacey had left himself open to opportunists when he got here out as homosexual in 2020.
“What has been reimagined with a sinister spin?” Gibbs mentioned. “What has been made up or twisted and why and when as a result of all of those allegations occurred a very long time in the past.”
He mentioned jurors would hear truths, half-truths, deliberate exaggerations and “many damned lies.”
Spacey, carrying spectacles and wearing a lightweight grey go well with, white shirt and gold tie, leaned ahead behind a window within the dock, listening intently as his lawyer supplied a short overview of the case. Gibbs will current an extended opening assertion after the prosecution rests its case.
The actor served because the Outdated Vic Theatre’s creative director from 2003 till 2015. The 4 males who’ve accused Spacey of sexual assault, now of their 30s or 40s, didn’t know one another, however all “had the misfortune to draw” his consideration, Agnew mentioned.
One sufferer mentioned he was incessantly groped towards his needs by Spacey within the early 2000s, culminating with a day when he was driving and the actor, who had been consuming, grabbed his privates so exhausting it took his breath away and he almost ran off the highway. He instructed Spacey to by no means try this once more.
Spacey “laughed and commented that his getting indignant merely turned him on,” Agnew mentioned.
Spacey narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips as Agnew spoke, often jotting notes with a pencil on the pages of a big black binder he carried into court docket.
Throughout questioning by police final yr, Spacey mentioned he was “baffled and deeply harm” by these allegations from somebody he thought of a pal. He mentioned the occasions had been reimagined into lies.
Agnew mentioned Spacey gave the impression to be assured the boys wouldn’t inform anybody — that the phrase of a celeb can be extra plausible than from somebody who wasn’t well-known.
“Not one of the males wished to be touched by Kevin Spacey … in a sexual manner, however he doesn’t appear to have cared very a lot for his or her emotions,” the prosecutor mentioned. “He did what he wished to do for his personal private sexual gratification.”
One other man who mentioned Spacey groped him at a charity occasion in 2005 solely instructed one pal about it till talking with police in 2017.
“Kevin Spacey … was a star, a golden boy as he put it,” Agnew mentioned in regards to the man. “He wasn’t certain he can be believed, and even when he had been, he didn’t suppose that he would obtain any help.”
In his assertion to police, Spacey mentioned he hadn’t achieved something with out consent. He mentioned it was “fully doable and certainly probably” he had made a “clumsy cross” however denied grabbing anybody’s crotch. He urged among the males have been searching for monetary achieve.
An aspiring actor who mentioned he reached out to Spacey for profession recommendation ended up at his London condo consuming beer and smoking marijuana in 2008. He both fell asleep or handed out on the couch and when he awoke, Spacey was performing oral intercourse on him, Agnew mentioned.
The person, who was in his early 20s, mentioned Spacey instructed him to not inform anybody what had occurred and to not point out he had been in Spacey’s condo. The person mentioned he was in shock as Spacey held the door open for him to depart, and that he then walked to a bus cease the place he sat down and cried.
He determined to talk with police in 2017 after studying about allegations towards Spacey within the U.S., Agnew mentioned.
Spacey’s profession was derailed when sexual misconduct allegations towards him arose because the #MeToo motion exploded. He was written off the Netflix political thriller “Home of Playing cards,” the place he performed lead character Frank Underwood, a ruthless and corrupt congressman who turns into president. He was reduce from the finished movie “All of the Cash within the World,” with the scenes getting reshot with Christopher Plummer.
A jury of 9 males and 5 ladies, together with two alternates, will determine his destiny in the course of the four-week trial in Southwark Crown Courtroom, the place he’s recognized by his full identify, Kevin Spacey Fowler. The actor, who has houses in London and the U.S., is free on bail.
Spacey turned one of the crucial celebrated actors of his era within the Nineteen Nineties, starring in movies together with “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “LA Confidential.”
He has earned a number of outstanding appearing awards for the theater, the silver display and tv. He received an Academy Award for supporting actor in “The Traditional Suspects” in 1995 and greatest actor Oscar for the 1999 film “American Magnificence.”
Spacey lately had his first movie function in a number of years, showing in 2022 in Italian director Franco Nero’s “The Man Who Drew God,” and enjoying the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman within the biopic “As soon as Upon a Time in Croatia.” He additionally stars within the unreleased U.S. movie “Peter 5 Eight.”
He has urged he can be in demand if he’s acquitted.
“There are folks proper now who’re prepared to rent me the second I’m cleared of those fees,” Spacey mentioned in an interview printed this month in Germany’s Zeit journal.
Agnew instructed jurors they must consider the credibility of the victims and determine in the event that they have been telling the reality or manufacturing allegations for revenue.
“The prosecution recommend that Mr. Spacey … abused the facility and affect that his popularity and fame afforded him,” Agnew mentioned. “Taking what and who he wished, when he wished.”