Kevin Spacey: ‘Humbled’ actor found not guilty of sexual offences against four men
Kevin Spacey said he is “humbled” after being found not guilty of committing sexual offences against four men in the UK between 2001 and 2013.
The 64-year-old double Oscar winner cried as he was cleared after a trial which started at the end of June, during which he was described as a “sexual bully” by the prosecution.
On his birthday, he nodded at jurors as they left court, crying and wiping his face with a tissue, before letting out a big sigh and thanking court staff.
Jury reaches verdict – follow live
In a short statement to the crowd of waiting media outside Southwark Crown Court, Spacey said: “I imagine that many of you can understand that there is a lot for me to process after what has just happened today.
“But I would like to say that I am enormously grateful to the jury for having taken the time to examine all of the evidence and all of the facts carefully before they reached their decision and I am humbled by the outcome today.
“I also want to thank the staff inside this courthouse, the security and all those who took care of us every single day, my legal team Evan and Lucy for being here every day and that’s all I have to say for the moment. Thank you very much.”
Giving evidence, Spacey fought back tears as he told how his world “exploded” when other allegations first emerged against him in the US in 2017.
“There was a rush to judgment and before the first question was asked or answered I lost my job, I lost my reputation, I lost everything in a matter of days,” he told jurors.
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Actor Kevin Spacey had denied all the charges against him
Spacey, who was artistic director at The Old Vic theatre in London between 2004 and 2015, was accused of drugging and performing a sex act on a former aspiring actor while he slept, and of several assaults on another man – a driver who claimed the actor grabbed his crotch so hard on one occasion that he “almost come off the road”.
Another man claimed the Hollywood actor subjected him to a “barrage” of “vile” sexual abuse before grabbing his crotch “like a cobra” at a West End event, while the fourth said the Hollywood star kissed his neck and told him to “be cool”, again before grabbing his crotch.
Spacey, best known for films including American Beauty and The Usual Suspects and for political drama series House Of Cards, vehemently denied all the allegations.
A jury cleared him of all the charges after deliberating for 12 hours and 26 minutes.
The judge, Mr Justice Wall, said jurors must have felt like they were in a “goldfish bowl” because of the level of interest in the case.
Denying the separate allegations by each of the men, Spacey told the court:
- He shared an “intimate” consensual moment with a former aspiring actor who claimed the star drugged him and performed a sex act on him while he was asleep in his flat;
- He had a “somewhat intimate” relationship with another complainant, but denied assaulting him in a “violent, aggressive, painful way” – and said it felt like he had been stabbed in the back when he learned of the claims;
- That allegations by a man he met in a West End theatre in the mid-2000s were “madness” and the incident described “never happened”;
- That he may have “made a pass” at another complainant but was “happy that he testified that the moment he told me he was not interested, I stopped”.
His defence team had labelled the prosecution’s case against him as “weak” – accusing some of the complainants of being after money.
The actor told the court he was a “flirt” and had been “open” about times he had been “promiscuous”, adding: “It doesn’t make me a bad person.”
He later told jurors he found it “harder to trust people because of who I was”, due to his fame and status.
The actor also said he felt under pressure to come out publicly as gay after allegations of sexual misconduct were first levelled at him.
After he was cleared, the Crown Prosecution Service said prosecutors “respect the decision of the court” as a crowd gathered outside.
The US has announced it is sending an aircraft carrier to the waters off South America as it ramps up an operation to target alleged drug smuggling boats.
The Pentagon said in a statement that the USS Gerald R Ford would be deployed to the region to “bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere”.
The vessel is the US Navy’s largest aircraft carrier. It is currently deployed in the Mediterranean alongside three destroyers, and the group are expected to take around one week to make the journey.
There are already eight US Navy ships in the central and South American region, along with a nuclear-powered submarine, adding up to about 6,000 sailors and marines, according to officials.
It came as the US secretary of war claimed that six “narco-terrorists” had been killed in a strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean Sea overnight.
A still from footage purporting to show the boat seconds before the airstrike, posted by US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on X
Pete Hegseth said his military had bombed a vessel which he claimed was operated by Tren de Aragua – a Venezuelan gang designated a terror group by Washington in February.
Writing on X, he claimed that the boat was involved in “illicit narcotics smuggling” and was transiting along a “known narco-trafficking route” when it was struck during the night.
All six men on board the boat, which was in international waters, were killed and no US forces were harmed, he said.
Ten vessels have now been bombed in recent weeks, killing more than 40 people.
Mr Hegseth added: “If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat al Qaeda. Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”
While he did not provide any evidence that the vessel was carrying drugs, he did share a 20-second video that appeared to show a boat being hit by a projectile before exploding.
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Footage of a previous US strike on a suspected drugs boat earlier this week
Speaking during a White House press conference last week, Donald Trump argued that the campaign would help tackle the US’s opioid crisis.
“Every boat that we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives. So every time you see a boat, and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough’. It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people,” he said.
Read more:
Survivors reported after boat strike
US destroys ‘drug smuggling submarine’
On Thursday, appearing at a press conference with Mr Hegseth, Mr Trump said that it was necessary to kill the alleged smugglers, because if they were arrested they would only return to transport drugs “again and again and again”.
“They don’t fear that, they have no fear,” he told reporters.
The attacks at sea would soon be followed by operations on land against drug smuggling cartels, Mr Trump claimed.
“We’re going to kill them,” he added. “They’re going to be, like, dead.”
Some Democratic politicians have expressed concerns that the strikes risk dragging the US into a war with Venezuela because of their proximity to the South American country’s coast.
Others have condemned the attacks as extrajudicial killings that would not stand up in a court of law.
Jim Himes, a member of the House of Representatives, told CBS News earlier this month: “They are illegal killings because the notion that the United States – and this is what the administration says is their justification – is involved in an armed conflict with any drug dealers, any Venezuelan drug dealers, is ludicrous.”
He claimed that Congress had been told “nothing” about who was on the boats and how they were identified as a threat.
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