Spacey, who was also celebrating his 64th birthday on Wednesday, began to cry and mouthed “thank you” to the nine men and three women jurors, before wiping away tears with a tissue.

The Hollywood star spoke with five of the jurors in the lobby of Southwark Crown Court, before emerging from the building to address a phalanx of journalists and photographers.

“I imagine that many of you can understand that there’s a lot for me to process after what has just happened today,” he said. “I am humbled by the outcome today.”

He also said he was “enormously grateful to the jury for having taken the time to examine all of the evidence and all of the facts carefully before they reached their decision”.

Spacey was swarmed by cameras as he then walked to a waiting taxi, as some members of the public clapped and wished him happy birthday and one woman shouted: “We love you, Kevin.”

During the four-week trial, prosecutors described the actor as a “sexual bully” who had aggressively groped three of the men and performed oral sex on the fourth while he had passed out in Spacey’s London apartment.

Spacey, tried under his full name Kevin Spacey Fowler, said in evidence that the case against him was weak, and that the incidents, if they had occurred at all, were consensual. He said he was promiscuous, a “big flirt” who had “casual, indiscriminate sexual encounters”.

One of complainants alleged Spacey painfully grabbed his crotch like “a cobra” in the mid-2000s, an allegation Spacey described as “absolute bollocks”, using a British slang term for testicles and for something which is nonsense.

While he said he might have made a clumsy pass at one of the men, he said he had never assaulted anyone and suggested that the accusers had come forward to make money.

  • The_Vampire@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You say that like the opposing view isn’t also the same thing, taking something (in this case, the word of the accusers) at face value.

    I don’t know Spacey, I have no illusions that I have zero understanding of who he is, but there’s no evidence here. People shouldn’t be punished for having accusations thrown at them, that’s not something they control.

    Sure, he could still be a terrible stain on this Earth. So could anyone.

    • Not_Alec_Baldwin@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know why people have such a hard time understanding this.

      You don’t know Spacey and you don’t know the accusers. Just because there are 9 of them doesn’t make it rape.

      I don’t have any doubt that he “used” fame and the authority provided by celebrity to get people to agree to things that they may not have really wanted.

      There’s a chasm between being an egomaniac and being a predator.

      • III@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I don’t have any doubt that he “used” fame and the authority provided by celebrity to get people to agree to things that they may not have really wanted.

        So you believe he is guilty of sexual assault then… okay, I can agree with you there.