The American actor Kevin Spacey, accused of twelve sexual crimes that occurred between 2001 and 2013, appeared this Wednesday before the court of Great Britain in the framework of the start of the trial against him, in a brief hearing in which the arguments of the case. The next hearing will be this Friday.
Throughout the trial, which would last four weeks, the former House of Cards star and winner of two Oscars for American Beauty (1999) and The Common Suspects (1995) is expected to insist on his innocence.
The 63-year-old actor faces 12 complaints for sexual assault, indecent assault and for causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent between 2001 and 2013. All crimes that were rejected by the actor, who has been free since last year on bail.
In May 2022, the British prosecutor accused the Hollywood star of five assaults on three men committed between 2005 and 2013, four in London and one in Gloucestershire, when he was director of the Old Vic theater in London. Then, in November, the Prosecutor’s Office added another seven charges, which included sexual assaults against a man between 2001 and 2004, forcing him “to participate in a non-consensual sexual relationship.”
The actor’s attorney, Patrick Gibbs, said Spacey “categorically denies any and all criminality in this case.”
Kevin Spacey faces trial for twelve charges against him for sexual assault and abuse. (Photo: EFE)
At Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Mark Wall warned the 14 jurors that they should not allow media coverage or the defendant’s fame to “influence” their assessments. “Many of you know his name or have seen his movies. That does not disqualify you from sitting on this jury,” said the magistrate.
The actor, who is domiciled both in the London neighborhood of Waterloo, and in Los Angeles, United States, where his family resides, arrived two hours earlier at Southwark Crown Court, in south London, and appeared relaxed.
The complaints against you
As a result of the allegations against him since the “Me Too” movement in 2017, Spacey was fired from the hit Netflix series House of Cards, where he played the lead character, Frank Underwood.
He was also left out of a Ridley Scott film, All the Money in the World, in which he was replaced by Canadian actor Christopher Plummer.
Previously, the actor had been accused in Massachusetts, United States, of having put his hands on the genitals of an 18-year-old boy in a bar in July 2016. However, these charges were dropped in 2019.
Meanwhile, in October, the New York justice acquitted him in a civil proceeding for sexually touching actor Anthony Rapp during an evening in Manhattan in 1986.
Likewise, in October 2020, he was ordered to pay almost 31 million dollars to MRC, the producer of House of Cards, as compensation for the loss of income attributed to his departure from the series. A Los Angeles judge confirmed this compensation last August.
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2023-06-28 16:25:47
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