KEVIN SPACEY — An Innocent Man

On July 26, the actor and dramaturge Kevin Spacey was cleared of nine charges after a three week trial at Southwark Crown Court. Nine years ago, three of the biggest names in entertainment in these islands saw their lives destroyed at the same court due to the machinations of corrupt police officers, equally corrupt prosecutors, and pathetic if malicious women. 

The publicist Max Clifford died in prison three years later. The recently deceased Rolf Harris would have died in prison but for the stellar work of private investigator William Merritt and his team, while although he was convicted only of one relatively trivial offence, the former DJ Dave Lee Travis saw his life virtually destroyed and his savings wiped out.

Kevin Spacey is a homosexual, so it was not pathetic women but even more pathetic men who were responsible for his predicament, although to be scrupulously fair he does appear to have brought this on himself to a degree.

Spacey is one of the most accomplished screen actors of his generation; his two biggest wins were Oscars – in 1996 for Supporting Actor, and 2000 for Best Actor. He has had a few wins and many nominations since then but for around eleven years acting took second place to directing, in the theatre, relocating across the Atlantic to London where he  took up the post of Artistic Director at the Old Vic, which although not located in the West End is one of Britain’s most prestigious theatres. 

Spacey has never been married, and this caused rumours to circulate, not that homosexuality has ever been a big thing in the Anglosphere this Millennium, especially in Britain where three of our greatest dramatists have been homosexuals: Noël Coward, Ivor Novello and Terence Rattigan.

In a 1999 interview with Playboy, by which time he was forty years old, Spacey denied emphatically the claim that he was homosexual.  

His problems began in August 2012 when an actor named Anthony Rapp claimed Spacey had made sexual advances to him at a party decades previously when Rapp would have been just fourteen. Instead of simply denying the allegation, as he could have done honestly, Spacey responded:

“I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave 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…As those closest to me know, in my life I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man.”

In other words, in spite of his previous emphatic denial, he was homosexual. When a dude claims he is bisexual, he means homosexual. So is Rapp. If you can stomach it, here he is.

On February 20, 2013, it was reported that over thirty men had made allegations of sexual impropriety against Spacey and at least twenty “people” from the Old Vic. It appears then that in his own circles, Spacey’s sexuality was no big secret, which should have made it easy for men to avoid him if they did not want that sort of attention.

Edged on by a clickbait news website, Rapp eventually decided to sue Spacey, and lost. The civil trial was held in New York last year, and Spacey was reduced to tears on the stand. The Southwark trial was very different though, because his freedom was at stake. If you want to understand how allegations of sexual abuse from past decades materialise out of thin air, this recently published video explains it, as does this one about the witch-hunt of Bill Cosby. The bottom line is that allegations of especially rape – including the rape of men – leave physical evidence. An historical allegation does not require evidence, only a story, and maybe a few tears.

It should be pointed out that before the Rapp trial and almost certainly inspired by Rapp’s claim plus Spacey’s qualified denial, he was accused of groping another teenager, the son of Heather Unruh, a former news anchor. This was both a criminal case and a civil one, but was so obviously contrived that it went nowhere.

The Southwark trial related to allegations by four men – all anonymous – and a total of twelve charges dating between 2001 and 2013. None of the men wanted to be touched, the jury was told. One was twenty years and more younger than Spacey, but went home with him after sharing pizza, beer, and a spliff or two. None of these self-styled victims reported it at the time, and none of them thumped him, which is what most men would do.

Wisely, Spacey took the stand in his own defence, and after twelve hours of deliberation he walked out of the court a free man giving a very short address to the crowd and thanking the jury.

This was the correct verdict because sins are not crimes, but Spacey will find it difficult if not impossible to rebuild his career, and frankly in spite of all this unwarranted persecution it is difficult to feel more than a gramme of sympathy for him. As he is now of a certain age he would do well to retire and rest on his laurels. He had nothing to prove in the courtroom. and he has nothing left to prove on the stage or on the set.