Three years after the charges against him were dropped in his country, American actor Kevin Spacey was charged in the United Kingdom with four counts of sexual assault on men during his tenure as art director of the London Theater.
Thursday’s announcement by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the British prosecutor’s office, echoes the allegations leveled at Weinstein over the scandal that halted the life of the “House of Cards” star.
“The CPS has acknowledged the criminal charges against Kevin Spacey, 62, on four counts of sexual assault against three men,” Rosemary Einsley, CPS’s special crime chief, said in a statement.
“He has been charged with engaging in intrusive sexual activity without the consent of a person,” he added, adding that the allegations “follow the review of the evidence collected by the Metropolitan Police during his investigation.
The British media reported that the actor was not formally charged as he was not currently in the UK.
The charges against him cover the period from March 2005 to April 2013.
The same plaintiff was charged with two counts of sexual assault in London in March 2005. Another sexual assault involved a second complainant in August 2008, who accused him of forcing her into intrusive sexual activity without his permission.
Finally, Kevin Spacey was charged in April 2013 in Gloucestershire (southwest England) with a fourth sexual assault on a third complainant.
London police said the names of the complainants had not been made public and that they were currently in their 30s and 40s.
Scotland Yard has launched an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against an actor in London’s Lambeth district, where the Old Wick Theater is located, where he was art director between 2004 and 2015.
“Alleged misconduct”
The allegations come in the wake of the Weinstein scandal, which was named in the fall of 2017 by an American filmmaker targeted by the New York Times and the New Yorker for numerous harassment and sexual harassment allegations.
Old Wick Theater commissioned an internal investigation into the conduct of its former art director by a law firm. In total, “20 personal testimonies of Kevin Spacey’s inappropriate behavior” were collected.
The actor is also under investigation in the United States.
According to US court documents, the announcement of the British trial series coincides when Kevin Spacey appears before a New York judge on Thursday for a practical hearing in a civil case brought by actor Anthony Rob. Anthony Rob accused Kevin Spacey of sexually abusing him during his youth, which Kevin Spacey denied and dropped the action in criminal proceedings.
Kevin Spacey was charged in the state of Massachusetts (East Coast) with indecent assault and sexual assault, but dropped the charges in July 2019. In July 2016, he was charged with possession of an 18-penis. An adult young man worked at a bar, after making him drink.
The allegations had serious repercussions on the career and reputation of two Oscar-winning American actors (“American Beauty” and “Custom Suspicious”).
He stepped down from Netflix from the “House of Cards” series in which he played the lead role.
Mr. Spacey was replaced by Canadian actor Christopher Plummer in Ridley Scott’s detective film “All the Money in the World”.
In November 2021, the actor was ordered to pay $ 31 million to the company that produced the “House of Cards” series.
The production company, MRC, sought compensation for the loss of income caused by the actor’s withdrawal from the series due to allegations of harassment and sexual abuse.
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