(LONDON) American actor Kevin Spacey pleaded not guilty to seven new sexual assault charges in the UK on Friday, months after previously denying other similar charges.
The 63-year-old Hollywood star, who attended the hearing at Southwark Court in London by videoconference, is accused of sexual assault on a man which allegedly occurred between 2001 and 2004.
Kevin Spacey is notably accused of having forced this man “to engage in non-consensual sexual intercourse”, the Crown prosecutor’s office indicated in November when he authorized the police to add these new charges to the file already actor heavy.
The two-time Oscar winner (for American Beauty and Usual Suspects) has already been prosecuted for four sexual assaults on three men between March 2005 and April 2013, when he was director of the London theater Old Vic.
Heard in July during a hearing for which he had made the trip to London, he had also pleaded not guilty.
In total, he must therefore now answer for 12 charges related to accusations of sexual assault on four men between 2001 and 2013.
The trial of the actor scheduled for next June and which should last a month will deal with all of these cases. A procedural hearing is scheduled for April 5.
Kevin Spacey, whose career has been largely put on hold by these cases, also faced charges in the United States.
Last October, he was found not guilty of sexual assault by a New York civil court.
He had also been charged with indecent assault and sexual assault on an 18-year-old young man in a bar in the state of Massachusetts, on the East Coast. The charges were dropped in July 2019.