Channel 4 Dispatches Special: Russell Brand
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THE TIMES wrote:Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
Four women, including one who was just 16, make allegations after an investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4 Dispatches
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The comedian and actor Russell Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assaults and emotional abuse during a seven-year period at the height of his fame.
Four women have alleged sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013, while he was a presenter for BBC Radio 2 and Channel 4 and then an actor in Hollywood films. Others have made a range of accusations about Brand’s controlling, abusive and predatory behaviour.
Brand denied the allegations and said his relationships have all been consensual.
The findings come from a joint investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4 Dispatches.
One woman alleges that Brand raped her against a wall in his Los Angeles home. She was treated at a rape crisis centre on the same day, according to medical records. Text messages show that in the hours after leaving his house, she told Brand that she had been scared by him and felt taken advantage of, adding: “When a girl say[s] NO it means no.” Brand replied saying he was “very sorry”.
A second woman alleges that Brand assaulted her when he was 31 and she was 16 and still at school. She said he referred to her as “the child” during an emotionally abusive and controlling relationship that lasted for about three months, and that Brand once “forced his penis down her throat”, making her choke. She says she tried to push him off and said she had to punch him in the stomach to make him stop.
A third woman claims that he sexually assaulted her while she worked with him in Los Angeles, and that he threatened to take legal action if she told anyone else about her allegation.
The fourth described being sexually assaulted by Brand and him being physically and emotionally abusive towards her.
All said they felt ready to speak only after being approached by reporters. Several said they felt compelled to do so given Brand's newfound prominence as an online wellness influencer, with millions of followers on YouTube and other sites.
The others have accused him of physical and emotional abuse, sexual harassment and bullying.
Most of the women, who do not know each other, have chosen to remain anonymous.
Over the past few years, reporters have interviewed hundreds of sources who knew or worked with Brand: ex-girlfriends and their friends and family, comedians and other celebrities, people who worked with him on radio and TV, and senior staff at the BBC, Channel 4 and other media organisations.
Along with these interviews reporters have seen private emails and text messages, submitted freedom of information requests, viewed medical and therapists' notes, scrutinised Brand's books and interviews, and watched and listened to hundreds of hours of his shows on the BBC, Channel 4 and YouTube to corroborate allegations.
Throughout his career, Brand's material has acknowledged his sex addiction and he has often publicly joked about his predatory behaviour and sex life.
There were rumours of more sinister behaviour — said to be discussed as an "open secret" by senior TV and radio executives, and among female comedians who warned each other of his behaviour — but the women involved previously felt unable to speak out.
Their stories — now told publicly for the first time — shine a light on Brand's mistreatment of women behind closed doors, and on the industries that enabled him.
The Times and The Sunday Times gave Brand eight days within which to reply to detailed allegations, including information to enable him to recall the alleged incidents. Lawyers for Brand initially said that they were not in a position to provide any response to the allegations because we had posed a "large litany of questions" and had intentionally chosen to anonymise the names of the women. They characterised this as deliberate and part of a pre-conceived strategy aimed at damaging their client. They said that publication was a "concerted campaign" and their client believes that there is a "deeply concerning agenda to all this, namely the fact that he is an alternative media broadcaster competing with mainstream media". Pressed to provide a full response, the same lawyers did not reply.
When given further opportunity to respond, Brand broadcast a statement on his YouTube channel saying "amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute". He said his relationships have always been consensual. He accused the mainstream media of a co-ordinated attack and said that there are witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives.
The Sunday Times asked his lawyer for the evidence referred to but no answer was provided.
‘He sent a car to my school to take me out of lessons’
As her taxi approached Russell Brand’s home, Alice remembers the driver begging her not to go inside. Recognising the destination, he had started to ask questions. Alice admitted she was 16 and still in school.
She says the driver replied that his daughter was the same age and entreated Alice: “Please, I’m asking you not to go in there, you could be my little girl, and I would want someone to do this for her.” He offered to take her home without charge, but Alice insisted she was fine. “He had just such a sad look in his eyes,” she recalls.
Alice, whose name we have changed to protect her identity, now realises that she wasn’t fine. During a relationship that lasted for about three months when Brand was a BBC radio presenter, she says that he referred to her as “the child” and alleges that he became increasingly controlling, and then emotionally and sexually abusive.
Brand, then 30, sent a car to her secondary school to take her out of lessons and to his home, she says, and asked her to save his name in her phone as “Carly” to deceive her parents. Brand’s management knew that he had a teenage girlfriend and advised him not to be seen with her in public, she says. Alice alleges that Brand once forced his penis down her throat, making her choke, and that after trying to push him off he only stopped after she hit him in the stomach. She says she was visibly upset after the incident.
Brand made his name in comedy in the early 2000s — and also achieved the status of London’s most lascivious lothario. After he gave up drugs in 2002, Brand filled that void with sex. In 2005, he received treatment for sex addiction at a clinic in the US. His womanising ways — he once said he could sleep with 80 women in a month — saw him crowned “Shagger of the Year” by The Sun three times, have relationships with some of the world’s most beautiful women including Kate Moss, and marry the pop star Katy Perry in 2010 (they divorced in 2012).
When Alice met Brand in 2006, he was becoming a household name as the host of Channel 4’s Big Brother’s Big Mouth and a BBC radio presenter; she was 16, recovering from an eating disorder and had never had a boyfriend.
He approached her in Leicester Square after she had been shopping at Topshop in Oxford Circus and he had been working at a nearby studio. Alice recognised him from TV and had previously seen him do stand-up.
“He took my shopping bags from me which was quite disarming and proceeded to go through my purchases and critique them, and then he took one dress out and said to me, ‘You’re going to wear this on our date this week’,” she recalls.
Brand asked her to dinner and she later told her mother, who made Alice text Brand to tell him her age, assuming it would put him off. It didn’t. Alice’s mother was very upset but did not feel she could control who her daughter met.
“I remember wearing a red wiggle dress and big platform shoes and had my hair blown out and was wearing makeup,” Alice now remembers. “But I didn’t look like a woman by any means. I was a child that had got dressed up for dinner.” On their first date, she claims Brand asked her as soon as they met to confirm she was definitely 16, saying: “I don’t give a strawberry float if you’re 12 . . . I need to know where I stand legally.”
During the earliest stages of their relationship, Alice says Brand was “very charming and very attentive”, sending her “verbose” messages. She remembers feeling “giddy” and “special”.
Before the first time they had sex, Alice says she told him she was a virgin and claims he was instantly aroused. “He was like, ‘Oh my God, my baby, my baby’, and picked me up and cradled me in his arms like a child and was stroking my hair. He’s like, ‘You’re like my little dolly.’” She says he became “preoccupied” with her being innocent and pure.
She claims that there was a large mirror on the wall and she remembers during sex he raised his arm above his head “like this power stance, like he was conquering something”.
Over the following weeks, Brand referred to her as “the child”, asked her to read Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and coached her on what to say to her parents when he wanted to see her, Alice says. Although Alice was over the age of consent in the UK, she and a family member who has also spoken to The Sunday Times to corroborate her story both describe Brand’s behaviour as “grooming”. Alice says he suggested how she could deceive her parents into allowing her to visit him, and claims that he gave her “scripts” on how to lie to them. She also alleges that he told her not to trust her friends and that they would “all be looking to make money from it” if she revealed she was seeing him. “It was isolating,” she said.
“Russell engaged in the behaviours of a groomer, looking back, but I didn’t even know what that was then, or what that looked like,” she says. Alice recalls that Brand told her never to send him sexual images, and she believed this was because of her age.
Alice accuses Brand of being controlling. She says that he once ran a bath for her and demanded that she stay in it while he went out for about an hour. Another time, Alice alleges that Brand removed the condom during sex without her knowing.
When he invited her over on his 31st birthday, Alice’s mother insisted on driving her, to emphasise to him that this was a girl with loving parents. When Alice’s mother went to meet Brand on the doorstep, Alice says that he blocked the door and “leant down and kissed my mother on the mouth”. She says that afterwards her mother was “very, very upset” at Brand’s behaviour and pleaded with Alice to come home with her, but Alice chose to stay.
Towards the end of the relationship, Alice says that Brand sexually assaulted her. She says: “I was sat up in the bed up against the headboard, and he forced his penis down my throat and I couldn’t breathe. It was just choking me and I couldn’t breathe, and I was pushing him away and he wasn’t backing off at all.”
She says: “I ended up having to punch him really hard in the stomach to get him off. I was crying and he said, ‘Oh I only wanted to see your mascara run anyway.’ Then I knew at that point that he didn’t care about hurting me physically or emotionally . . . It shouldn’t take you having to punch someone and to wind them to get them off you. It shouldn’t be a physical fight.”
As Alice lay on one side of the bed after the attack, she alleges that he climbed on top of her, held open her mouth and drooled into it. “I was gagging and trying to fight him off me, but he’s lying on top of me, so I can’t,” she alleges. “My limbs are trapped underneath him and I just thought, ‘Why are you doing this? It can’t even be any sexual gratification in this.’ And then he held my mouth shut and made me swallow it and so I was just gagging and crying.”
The relationship ended when Brand invited her over one day, and she arrived to find another woman in his bed. “I was so angry, and I said to him, ‘Why would you do this to me? This is so humiliating.’”
Alice has decided to speak out because she now believes that she was too young to be able to consent to a relationship with an adult man, and that the law should be changed to protect those under 18. “My mum still feels like she failed me in some way in allowing this to happen, but she had no recourse at all,” she says. “It shouldn’t be legal for a 16-year-old to have a relationship with a man in their thirties. There should be something in place to protect children.”
She also wants the entertainment industry to change. For many years, Brand has been applauded for his jokes describing how he has manipulated women for sex.
“I think he was very skilful in the start of making his identity be, ‘I’m the womaniser. I’m a sex addict. I’m inappropriate but it’s all just a joke, it’s funny’,” Alice claims, “It’s a smokescreen for a lot more of his dark behaviour.”
Watch Russell Brand: In Plain Sight: Dispatches at 9pm on Channel 4
https://archive.ph/KX4zn#selection-1875.0-1875.67
KK, 2014 wrote:Hate him.
Vindicated after 9 years.
