LONDON – British authorities are filing criminal charges against Kevin Spacey on four charges of assaulting three men, the country’s Crown Prosecution Service said in a press release on Thursday.
Rosemary Ainslie, chief of the agency’s special crimes division, said in the release that Mr. Spacey, 62, “had also been charged with causing a person to engage in invasive sexual activity without consent.”
The approval of the charge followed an assessment of the evidence gathered by London police. Mr Spacey cannot be formally charged until he enters England or Wales, a spokesman for the service said in a telephone interview. The spokesperson declined to comment on whether the agency would continue extradition proceedings if it did not.
The press release said the charges related to three complainants. The incidents were dated March 2005, August 2008 and April 2013, adding – a time when Mr Spacey was the Artistic Director of the Old Vic Theater in London. All of the incidents took place in London, except for one in 2013, which took place in Gloucestershire, England.
Mr. Spacey’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The first person to publicly accuse Mr. Spacey of sexual misconduct was actor Anthony Rapp, who said in 2017 that Mr. Spacey had made unwanted sexual advances in the 1980s when he was 14 years old.
Shortly after, a former television host came forward to tell Mr. Spacey of sexually abusing her son, then accused 20 people who dated Mr. Spacey worked together at the Old Vic Theater in London, where he was Artistic Director for 11 years, showing him inappropriate behaviour. The theater ordered an independent investigation, in which Mr. Spacey did not participate, and released a report that concluded that “his stardom and status with the Old Vic has deterred people, and particularly young staff or young actors, from feeling like they could say something or raise a hand for help.”
The report said the theater was unable to independently verify the allegations. But some actors and staff members did go public. One actor, Roberto Cavazos, wrote on Facebook that he had “some nasty encounters with Spacey that were almost called harassment” at the theater. “Looks like it only took a man under 30 for Mr. Spacey to make us feel free,” wrote Mr. Cavazos.
Representatives from the Old Vic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
In 2018, Mr. Spacey was accused of sexually assaulting the… 18-year-old son of television host in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Prosecutors dropped the case when the prosecution invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to continue to testify.
A massage therapist sued Mr. Spacey in California in 2019, accusing him of groping and kissing him before offering him oral sex during a massage. The prosecution died unexpectedly prior to the trial and the case was dismissed when his estate dropped the lawsuit.
mr. Spacey, a two-time Oscar winner, quickly fell out of favor after Mr. Rapp, who has an ongoing lawsuit against him.
TV and movie producers started Mr. Dropping Spacey from projects after Mr. Rapp had gone public and more allegations followed, including of the Netflix political drama House of Cards, which ended without the actor. But more recently, he has found roles in smaller films, including an Italian feature film and an American thriller.
In January, Croatian newspapers reported that Mr Spacey was shooting a film in the country where he played Franjo Tudjman, the former communist general who led Croatia to independence.
This month, Deadline reported that he had signed up for a historical drama called “1242 – Gateway to the West,” which is slated to begin filming in Hungary and Mongolia in October. The film is said to tell the story of one of Genghis Khan’s grandsons. It was sold at the Cannes Film Festival, Deadline added. His new American thriller was also sold in Cannes, according to Rolling Stone.
Alex Marshall reported from London, and Julia Jacobs from New York. Susan Beachy contributed to research.
