Kevin Spacey granted bail ahead of plea hearing
Kevin Spacey “strenuously” denies allegations of sex offenses, his lawyer said on Thursday as the Oscar-winning actor made his first appearance at a British court to face charges dating back almost 20 years.
Actor Kevin Spacey arrives at the Westminster Magistrates Court in London. Spacey is appearing in a court in London on Thursday after he was charged with sexual offenses against three men. The 62-year-old Spacey is accused of four counts of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
Photographers and television camera crews thronged Spacey, 62, as he arrived at London’s Westminster Magistrates Court for the preliminary hearing.
Police said the alleged assaults had taken place between March 2005 and April 2013 – four in the capital London and one in Gloucestershire. They involved one man who is now in his 40s and two men now in their 30s.
“He was due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court at 10am (0900 GMT) on Thursday, 16 June,” London’s Metropolitan Police said, confirming Spacey had been charged on the five counts authorized by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) following his arrest.
Spacey, who had Academy Award nominations for American Beauty and Usual Suspects in the 1990s, has stated that he is prepared to defend himself in Britain and is convinced that his innocence would be established in any proceedings. Throughout the 30-minute hearing, Spacey sat in the glass-fronted dock and stood to give his full name, Kevin Spacey Fowler, as well as his birthdate and a London address.
Although his attorney, Patrick Gibbs, has stated that Mr. Spacey “strenuously rejects any and all crime in this case,” he was not required to make a formal plea.
Spacey was given unrestricted free until his next appearance which was a plea hearing planned for July 14, by Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram. The plea was scheduled to take place at Southwark Crown Court in south London.
Since being accused of sexual assault five years ago, Spacey has virtually vanished from the public eye. He was once one of Hollywood’s top stars.
The Old Vic theatre in London said in November 2017 that it had been made aware of 20 individual complaints of improper behavior by Spacey by 20 men who had interacted with him at the theatre or in connection with it between 1995 and 2013. After the allegations of sexual misbehavior surfaced, he was fired from the TV series “House of Cards” and removed from the film “All the Money in the World.”
But his celebrated career came to an abrupt halt in 2017 when actor Anthony Rapp accused the star of assaulting him at a party in the 1980s when Rapp was a teenager. He denies the allegations.
Spacey is one of the highest-profile figures to be accused of sexual assault in connection with the #MeToo movement, which has seen many previously silent victims of sexual abuse speak out in a global wave of protest.