[News] Actor, Kevin Spacey arrives at court for the final day of his s3x assault trial

Hollywood actor, Kevin Spacey was pictured arriving at a court in London today for the final day of his s3x assault trial.

 

The  Oscar winner, 63, is accused of assaulting four men ‘for his own sexual gratification’ between 2001 and 2013.

Jurors have heard claims that the House of Cards star is a ‘sexual bully’ who delighted in making his assault victims feel ‘powerless and uncomfortable’. But Spacey has denied all the charges, with his lawyer telling jurors three of the complainants were lying and they should not convict him for making a ‘clumsy pass’ at a fourth man.

 

The jury is expected to retire to consider their verdicts today after Mr. Justice Wall concludes his summing up.

In his closing speech last week, defence barrister Patrick Gibbs, KC, told Southwark Crown Court: ‘There are three liars in this case. We can’t see into their brain with electrodes and know what they are thinking.

 

 

‘The reason they are lying can possibly only be known to them. The problem with [the fourth complainant’s] evidence is not that he’s a liar, but that he was not exactly sober as he describes – but nor was anyone.’

 

He went on to question the evidence given by the complainants’ family and friends, adding: ‘They have pointed the police to the people they believe will faithfully and genuinely echo the stories they were told.

‘Be careful to remember when considering this strand of the evidence. It is not independent but comes from the mouth of the complainant himself and therefore is not independent confirmation that these things happened.

‘I don’t suggest they are liars, I suggest they are sounding boards for that which they were told.’

 

One man claims he was repeatedly assaulted by Spacey including, on one occasion, as he drove the star to one of Elton John’s White Tie and Tiara Ball AIDS fundraisers at his Windsor home in the early 2000s.

Relating to this allegation, Mr Gibbs said: ‘By the time he came forward to the police 20 years had passed. A late allegation. We have done the best we can all those years later to answer, whether we were successful or not is a matter for you.

‘Most of what [the man] claims is so vague as to date and all happened in private, that it’s impossible to contradict it. And then what you’re left with is one person’s word against the other.

‘It turned out to be a complete fabrication. It’s that dramatic centrepiece, it’s the crotch grab. Grabbed so hard it caused so much pain he almost crashed the car.’

The lawyer told the court that it ‘turned out, on the evidence, to be fiction’ that was ‘designed to dramatise and dignify a reimagining long after the events of all that really happened between those two men’.

‘It’s a fiction that emphasises that he had never gone along with the contact that had taken place between the two of them, he had never consented to any kind of sexual touching.

‘It would show that, if it were true, wouldn’t it? And that I suggest is what it was designed to show.

‘That it was an abusive relationship involving, in varying degrees, and resulting finally in violence and aggression. But the Crown now says about that allegation, ‘well dates don’t matter’.

‘My retort is that they would say that now, wouldn’t they? Because none of the dates they have relied upon works, every single date has been disproven.

‘Is that why the Crown’s case is now that dates don’t matter? Because there isn’t a date that works.’

Mr Gibbs said: ‘I’m not suggesting that [the man] is gay, but I am suggesting he wouldn’t be the first person to be met with a charismatic, persuasive admirer.

‘Although he may have been ashamed and confused by it, in a way that concerned things with his girlfriend, in private it is my suggestion he did not refuse it.

‘Perhaps, I don’t know, I’m not a psychiatrist, he later needed to redescribe what happened not only to his brother, but to himself, because that explained a confusing episode in an otherwise conventional life.

‘Perhaps it even helped him to feel angry about it. Now that Kevin Spacey has been cancelled and people were asking him about it, he has the perfect opportunity.

‘He had the perfect opportunity to rewrite history in those simple terms: ‘I was abused by Kevin Spacey just like the other three people I see the CPS have identified.’ That was the moment of greatest opportunity to do that.’

Spacey pleaded not guilty in January to three counts of indecent assault, three counts of sexual assault, and one count of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent.

 

He also previously denied four further charges of sexual assault and one of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.

 

A further charge of indecent assault, an alternative count, was added midway through the trial taking the total number of alleged offences to 13.

 

On Wednesday, the four indecent assault charges were struck off by the judge, due to a ‘legal technicality’ and not as a result of the prosecution abandoning any allegation.

 

The charges relate to alleged offences between January 1, 2001 and June 24, 2005.

 

The two-time Oscar winner starred in Glengarry Glen Ross, Seven, LA Confidential and Baby Driver. He also had the lead role in the Netflix series House of Cards.