An alleged sex assault victim of Kevin Spacey said in front of a London court that the "slippery" Hollywood actor had tried to "groom" him.
ADVERTISEMENTOne of Kevin Spacey 's accusers described the Oscar-winning actor in a London court this week as a “slippery, snaky” predator whom good-looking young men were warned to avoid.
The man, who worked with Spacey when he came to London's Old Vic Theatre in the early 2000s, said the American actor offered to introduce him to Hollywood stars. But the man said that he was warned to be careful around Spacey.
“It was well known he was up to no good,” the man said in a video of his police interview played for jurors in Spacey’s sexual assault trial. “He was almost right from the get-go grooming me.”
The accuser, who cannot be identified under British law, is one of four men the former House of Cards star is accused of assaulting in the UK.
He said Spacey made him uncomfortable querying him about his sexuality, then became “touchy-feely” and graduated to aggressive groping when they were alone together. He likened Spacey to the villain he played in the 1995 thriller Se7en:“He’s a bit like that, a bit creepy,” the man said in his police interview last year.
The man who testified Monday said he reacted with horror when Spacey first made physical contact by rubbing his neck early in their work relationship in the early 2000s.
“The first time that he touched me was just a massive shock,” he said. “I just don’t like people’s hands on me.”
When he complained to a woman he worked for, she laughed it off and she said: “You can cope, you can handle it. We all know what he’s like."
The man said he decided he “didn't want to upset the apple cart” and got on with his job. But he said that as Spacey escalated to grabbing his crotch and taking his hand to rub the actor's own privates over the pants, he began to dread when Spacey would return to London.
He said the final straw came on a day he was driving Spacey to a celebrity-studded summer gala in 2004 or 2005. The star violently gripped his crotch and he nearly ran off the road, the man testified.
“He grabbed me really hard, and it really hurt," he said. "I pushed him against the door and said, ‘Don’t do that again or I will knock you out.’”
“That’s such a turn on to me," he said Spacey replied.
Spacey, 63, served as artistic director at the Old Vic from 2003 until 2015. He is free on bail and has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges for events that date from 2001 to 2013. The charges include sexual assault, indecent assault and causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
The trial, which is expected to last four weeks, continues this week before a jury of nine men and three women in Southwark Crown Court.
