Kevin Spacey will serve as his own legal representation and “voluntarily appear” before U.K. courts after being charged with four incidents of sexual assault by Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service last week. The incidents are said to have occurred between 2005 and 2013, and are believed to have taken place while Spacey served as artistic director at the Old Vic Theater in London through 2015.
Through his representative, the actor released a statement to Good Morning America on Tuesday morning, which states that the 62-year-old is “confident” that he’ll be found innocent during a court trial.
“I very much appreciate the Crown Prosecution Service’s statement in which they carefully reminded the media and the public that I am entitled to a fair trial, and innocent until proven otherwise,” the statement read, via The Hollywood Reporter. “While I am disappointed with their decision to move forward, I will voluntarily appear in the U.K. as soon as can be arranged and defend myself against these charges, which I am confident will prove my innocence.”
Since 2017, when actor Anthony Rapp claimed that Spacey made a sexual advance toward him in 1986 — when Rapp was just 14 years old and Spacey was 26 — dozens more allegations have been lobbed at the actor, including eight people who worked on House of Cards. Though he has yet to be formally convicted of a crime, Spacey was ordered to pay $31 million to MRC, the studio that produced the Netflix series, for repeatedly breaching contractual obligations by violating its sexual harassment policy.
“The CPS has authorized criminal charges against Kevin Spacey, 62, for four counts of sexual assault against three men,” Rosemary Ainslie, head of the CPS Special Crime Division, said in a statement on Thursday. “He has also been charged with causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.”
At the time the charges were made, Spacey had just begun working on his comeback, with two films in production. The producers of one of those films, Peter Five Eight, which recently debuted a trailer at the Cannes Film Festival, said in a statement that they had no knowledge or comment on the “various swirling allegations” and are leaving the matter to the courts.
Published: May 31, 2022 07:45 am