Yahoo News Kevin Spacey Alleged Victim ‘Woke Up’ to Actor ‘Sexually Assaulting’ Him, U.K. Court Hears
One of Kevin Spacey’s alleged victims woke up in the actor’s flat to find Spacey sexually assaulting him, a U.K. court heard today.
The fourth and final alleged victim gave evidence on Monday morning via a pre-recorded police interview video before taking the witness stand where he answered questions from the Crown Prosecution Service’s barrister Christine Agney KC and Spacey’s barrister Patrick Gibbs KC.
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Spacey looked on from inside the dock, which is shaped like a glass box in the middle of the room. The actor rarely showed any emotion, but occasionally smirked during portions of the interview video. During Gibbs’ cross-examination of the alleged victim, Spacey appeared to be more engaged and would often lean forward in his seat.
In the video, the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, described how he had first met Spacey as an aspiring actor when he auditioned for a show Spacey was producing in 2008. A few months later the man wrote to the “House of Cards” star asking him to meet for a coffee in the hopes he would mentor him. The complainant, who was in his early 20s at the time, said he wasn’t even sure the letter had ever been received but then Spacey unexpectedly called him and asked him to meet for a drink.
The complainant initially thought it was a prank. “I said ‘fuck off’ because I thought it was a friend taking the mick,” he told police in the video. Once the alleged victim realized the call was real, he said, he felt “starstruck” and immediately agreed to meet the actor at Waterloo station in London later that day.
When the duo reconvened later that evening, Spacey had brought his dog for a walk. They began walking away from the station and the complainant said he immediately thought it was unusual that they seemed to be walking toward a residential area rather than bars and restaurants. After about 10 minutes they ended up outside Spacey’s apartment and the actor suggested they go upstairs for a drink, to which the complainant agreed.
Once inside, Spacey offered the man a beer and they ate some leftover pizza and smoked a joint. The alleged victim said he asked Spacey various questions about acting in hopes of getting a conversation going but “quickly realized, picking up on clues, that he was slightly despondent to me in conversation, and didn’t really want to talk about his career.”
“[There was] an element of my brain that was trying to guide the conversation into acting and career and another part of my brain — that I didn’t want to listen to — that knew that that wasn’t the dynamic,” said the man.
At some point, the complainant said Spacey opened his arms, motioning for the complainant to give him a hug. “I thought it was kind of weird,” the alleged victim told police. “I didn’t know [him] well enough to be hugging them on the sofa.”
Spacey then went over to the man and hugged him around the waist before putting his head onto the man’s lap. The actor began “rubbing his face into my crotch,” the complainant said. He lifted up Spacey’s head and tried to distract him by asking whether a model train that was displayed in the flat had come from “Superman Returns,” in which Spacey had starred. He continued trying to distract him by asking about various actors and whether Spacey had met them, such as Marlon Brando, and at one point asked if he could go on the balcony to have a cigarette, to which Spacey said “no” because there’d be “plenty of time for that later.”
In the police video, the complainant was asked why he didn’t just leave then, to which he replied: “I just felt vulnerable,” he said. “I know what you mean — the idea of saying, ‘You know what, I’m going to go.’ But then there’s the doubt, that maybe I’m being a dickhead and this is the theater world.”
He continued: “You just don’t want to annoy someone who’s that powerful in the business you’re trying to break into because the social sway he had was massive. If he said, ‘This person’s not going to work,’ they’re not going to work.”
At some point, the alleged victim said he fell asleep, which “isn’t something I’d normally do,” he told police. The man added that he didn’t want to “wildly insinuate” but it was “unusual behaviour [for him] to just conk out.” Later, when pressed on the witness stand, the alleged victim explicitly said he thought he had been slipped something to render him unconscious. “I was taken advantage of, I believe drugged,” the man said under cross examination.
He said he woke up very early the following morning on Spacey’s sofa to find his pants unbuttoned and unzipped with the actor performing oral sex on him. The complainant said he told Spacey “No,” which the actor ignored. He then pushed Spacey away at which point Spacey stood up, opened the front door and motioned for the alleged victim to leave, telling him he had people coming as he was going on holiday. He added that the alleged victim shouldn’t tell anyone he had even been to Spacey’s flat.
The complainant then said he left the flat and when he got to the bus stop, sat and “had a bit of a cry” before going home. He told police he did not have any contact with Spacey again after the encounter.
Spacey’s lawyer, Patrick Gibbs KC, pointed out during the cross-examination that phone records showed Spacey had met the man outside Waterloo around 11 p.m. and then called him again shortly after midnight the same evening — suggesting he had left much earlier than he was claiming. Gibbs also pointed out a number of phone calls and text messages from Spacey’s phone to the complainants in the months following the alleged incident. The man, whose own phone records hadn’t been produced for the hearing, claimed to have never received those calls and texts.
He said that following his encounter with Spacey he had messaged him once, hoping to meet up with him so he could record him admitting to what had happened, but had never had a response.
In his cross-examination, Gibbs also pointed out the alleged victim had had money troubles due to a “gambling problem” and had regularly borrowed from friends and family. He also pointed out that the man had contacted numerous media outlets before going to police and had also been in touch with a lawyer representing other alleged Spacey victims who had told him he could get up to $10 million compensation.
The complainant acknowledged he had had a “small gambling problem” but said he had occasionally borrowed cash because he was “not that great with money” and had since repaid all of it.
“I’m not doing this for the money but I do believe I should be remunerated for the atrocious, despicable disgusting nature of your client,” the man told Gibbs.
The case continues.
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