Kevin Spacey Trial: Actor Testifies

LONDON –

Warning: Disturbing Content. Readers discretion advised.

Kevin Spacey denied grabbing men by the crotch was his “trademark” pick-me-up when he was questioned by prosecutors Friday during his sexual assault trial in a London courtroom.

In a heated argument that required court intervention, Spacey was asked about allegations that he aggressively grabbed a man backstage at a theater charity event.

“Absolute rubbish!” Spacey responded to giggles from the gallery in the packed courtroom.

“Yes, because that’s exactly where you grabbed him, wasn’t it?” Prosecutor Christine Agnew snapped back.

“Real?” Spacey said, looking up at Judge Mark Wall in disbelief. “Did he accuse me of reaching for his bollocks?”

Someone said, “Yes,” and Wall told him to answer the prosecution’s question.

“I don’t,” Spacey said.

The two-time Oscar winner stuck to his testimony from the day before, insisting he had never sexually assaulted three of the four accusers who claimed to have had disturbing encounters between 2001 and 2013 that escalated from unwanted touching to aggressive caressing.

He dismissed one man’s claims as “pure fantasy” and said he shared consensual encounters with two others who later regretted it. He accepted the allegations of grabbing for a fourth man’s crotch, saying he made a “clumsy pass” during a night of heavy drinking.

Spacey was sometimes annoyed and laughed off other questions in his last chance to win over jurors in a case that could affect his ability to return after allegations of sexual misconduct ruined his once-great career derailed.

The 63-year-old American, who is identified in court by his full name, Kevin Spacey Fowler, has pleaded not guilty to a dozen counts, including assault and assault and one charge of inciting penetrative sexual activity. without permission. He could face a prison sentence if convicted.

Spacey rarely glanced at Agnew as the two thrashed and turned his gaze to the jury at Southwark Crown Court, but without his glasses on. She pressed him on each of the allegations, claiming that the men who testified against him had told the truth and Spacey insisted they were lying.

Agnew said Spacey was not only the “big flirt” he claimed to be, but also a “big sexual bully”.

“That’s your term,” Spacey objected.

Agnew suggested that Spacey was excited while sitting next to a man in a theater during a rehearsal for a charity event. She said he later decided to “go for it” when he was alone backstage in a genital hold that the man described as a conspicuous cobra.

“You’re just making things up now,” Spacey said.

When asked why the man would lie, Spacey said, “Money, money, then money.”

Two of the men have filed a lawsuit against him.

Spacey said that as a celebrity it would have been easy to “have sex all the time”, but he found it hard to trust people and that led to periods of loneliness.

“Did you then seek sexual contact with people to relieve that burden?” asked Agnew.

“Welcome to life,” Spacey replied. “Yes, yes I did.”

Spacey said he had been promiscuous at times, adding, “It doesn’t make me a bad person.”

If he was making out with someone, he said reaching for their crotch would be an inappropriate first move.

He objected to the term “cross-grabbing” to describe what he had done in the case of saying he had misread the signs of a man he had met in a pub.

“I would say in my opinion it’s not a grip, not a groping,” he said of what he’d done. “It’s a gentle touch.”

“The fact is, Mr. Spacey Fowler, this is how you work,” Agnew said bluntly.

The alleged victims all said they only came forward after allegations against Spacey surfaced in the United States in 2017 as the #MeToo movement gained momentum.

Agnew said Spacey had taken advantage of his powerful status as “essentially the golden boy of the London theater scene” and knew his victims were unlikely to speak to him.

Spacey said he had only used his position to restore the Old Vic Theatre, where he was artistic director for ten years, to its former glory.

“I didn’t have a magic wand that I waved in front of people’s faces whenever I wanted someone to sleep with me,” he said.

When asked about the most serious charge he faces, based on allegations that he engaged in oral sex with an aspiring actor who fell asleep or passed out on his couch, Agnew disputed Spacey’s account that the encounter was consensual and romantic been.

She questioned Spacey’s statement that he called the man out of concern after he was rushed out of his apartment. Agnew suggested that the man was in fact unconscious when the call was made, indicating it was a mistake or a cellular phone.

“That’s your theory,” Spacey said.

“That’s the charge,” Agnew replied.

“And it’s a weak one!” he replied.