By Sam Tobin
LONDON (Reuters) – The jury in U.S. actor Kevin Spacey’s sexual assault trial in London retired to consider their verdicts on Monday.
Spacey, 63, is standing trial at Southwark Crown Court on nine charges of sexual offences against four men between 2004 and 2013 in Britain, where he worked from 2003 as artistic director of London’s Old Vic theatre.
Three of the four accusers have said Spacey aggressively groped them. The fourth says Spacey sexually assaulted him and then performed oral sex on him while he was passed out in Spacey’s flat.
Spacey has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and suggested in evidence that his accusers were either lying or reimagining consensual sexual encounters.
Judge Mark Wall sent the jury of nine men and three women out to begin their deliberations at 1145 GMT on Monday, after giving them final directions about the evidence they had heard over the course of the trial.
(Reporting by Sam Tobin; editing by Michael Holden)
