Former actor Russell Brand finally took the stand in his rape trial — but he says he’ll be facing the charges and the jury alone.
The actor told jurors at London’s Southwark Crown Court Wednesday that he was unable to persuade a “single person” to testify on his behalf. When the lead attorney for his defence, Ian Winter, asked if anyone would touch him “with a bargepole,” Brand answered, “No.” “My entire life has been consumed by these allegations,” Brand said. “I have devoted myself to these matters.”
Brand, 51, faces multiple charges related to his interactions with six women between 1999 and 2009; one count of attempted indecent assault, three counts of rape, and three counts of sexual assault. He pleaded not guilty and has publicly denied the allegations. Prior to the public accusations, Brand was best known for his comedic work in Hollywood staples like 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall and the 2010 comedy Get Him to the Greek. (He was also a well-known former husband of pop star Katy Perry. The two divorced after 14 months.) In recent years, he had pivoted toward digital pundit work, creating podcasts centred on spirituality and anti-government conspiracies.
But in a 2023 documentary investigation, Russell Brand: In Plain Sight, multiple women accused Brand of predatory actions, ranging from abuse, assault, and rape. Following its release, six women independently went to police and accused him of past assaults.
Brand’s trial, which began on Oct. 12, will undoubtedly pit the women’s testimony about their experience with Brand against Brand’s own recollection of events. Prior to the criminal charges, Brand was public about his womanising tendencies and often expressed remorse or regret for the ways he treated women, but has always maintained that his sexual encounters were consensual.
During opening statements for the prosecution, lead prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones argued that Brand’s own comments throughout his fame and the testimony of the women prove that Brand is a serial sexual predator who used the sexual demeaning of women as a means to an end. “The circumstances of the offending were as wide and as varied as the defendant’s career,” Karmy-Jones said. “His strong desire for some form of sexual contact was indiscriminate and voracious.”
For the past two weeks, the court has been hearing testimony from Brand’s accusers, both by playing their video interviews with police and with the victims taking the stand. One of the women, who accused Brand of assaulting her at a radio station around 2004, said Brand “lept on her” when she was leaving a room, grabbing her waist, bottom, arms, legs and roughly pinning her to a wall while kissing her as she fought. The room was full of people on Brand’s team — who she called his “entourage” — and she testified that they did nothing to stop it. During questioning, she said she didn’t go to the police because she was afraid of career repercussions.
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“One, who is going to believe me?” she said. “Two, I could lose my job and I have a mortgage to pay.”
Another woman who claims Brand anally raped her while they were having consensual sex, fought back against the defence attorney’s implications that she consented to the entire night.
“I did not consent. We are not here to discuss my morality … I didn’t consent to what happened to me, I have said that repeatedly,” she said. “I carried that feeling of guilt and shame and I felt lots of things but particularly for exactly the reason that you are doing right here — that I brought it on myself. That just because you go somewhere willingly and the outcome in the end is not consensual, it’s a different scenario.”
On the stand, Brand stated that he remembers sleeping with some of the claimants, but others he doesn’t remember at all. In all cases, he denies assaulting them and said that he often speaks during sex to confirm his partner is enjoying it. When his attorney asked for an example, Brand said, “I believe I would have been saying: ‘Am I doing this right, do you like this, is this OK?”
“Consent is fundamental, essential and necessary, and in many ways more important than sex itself,” he added.
The trial is expected to last at least another four weeks.
From Rolling Stone US
