Kevin Spacey Charged With Multiple Counts of Sexual Assault

Superman Returns villain Kevin Spacey has been charged with four counts of sexual assault against three different men in the United Kingdom, according to a statement from Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service released on Thursday. The two-time Academy Award winner has been effectively blackballed from Hollywood since 2017, when the first allegations of sexual abuse and assault were levied against the actor. At the time, he acknowledged problematic behavior, and blamed it on the strain of hiding his homosexuality, which had long been rumored, but was confirmed for the first time in the wake of the accusations.

Spacey drew sharp criticism for that defense, seeming like he was either trying to “blame” his actions on his sexuality, or at least try to hide behind it in order to be more sympathetic. In the time since he was forced out of Netflix’s House of Cards and filmmaker Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World, Spacey has largely laid low, but  has sometimes popped up on the internet to make inexplicable and sometimes ominous comments.

Spacey has been charged with “causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent,” according to the CPS, and “follows a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police Service in its investigation,” the organization said. 

Per CNN, “[t]he charges relate to two alleged incidents in London in 2005, another two and 2008, and a further incident in Gloucestershire, western England, in 2013. The alleged victim of the 2005 incidents is now in his 40s, while the two men allegedly involved in the 2008 and 2013 incidents are now in their 30s.”

Spacey’s alleged American victims were both young men, with actor Anthony Rapp saying that Spacey had made unwelcome sexual advances on him when Rapp was just 14 years old. 

Spacey said in a statement on Twitter that he didn’t remember the alleged incident involving Rapp, but he wrote: “If I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”

The 2017 allegations called attention to Spacey’s long-standing professional relationship with filmmaker Bryan Singer, who has been repeatedly accused of sexual impropriety with barely-legal young men. Singer directed Spacey in The Usual Suspects and Superman Returns. 

h/t CNN