The court heard from Russell Brand on Tuesday in the disgraced star’s ongoing rape and sexual assault trial, where the judge also reduced one of his charges.
At London’s Southwark Crown Court, the actor, presenter and comedian (St Trinian’s, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) was initially accused of three counts of rape, three charges of sexual assault and one allegation of indecent assault, with six women alleging offenses dating from 1999 to 2009. He denies all of the charges, which The Hollywood Reporter has looked at in depth as they were presented by prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones in the trial’s first week.
But Mr Justice Bennathan has on Tuesday afternoon reduced the indecent assault charge to attempted indecent assault. After a delay in court, the judge told the jury there was “insufficient evidence” to support the original charge and that they should find Brand not guilty of this particular allegation. The charge relates to a claim from one complainant who said, while working at MTV with Brand in 2001, he grabbed her by the arm and attempted to drag her into a nearby toilet.
Among the other claims are a woman who says Brand raped her in a Bournemouth hotel room in 1999 following a comedy gig of his. Another, whose emergency services call was played to the jury on Tuesday morning, says he grabbed her breasts and pushed her into a toilet in a bar in Soho, where he orally raped her, in 2004. A separate woman alleges Brand anally raped her at his home in Hampstead in 2009, after consensual vaginal sex. He maintains every encounter was consensual.
Also on Tuesday, after weeks of testimonies from accusers, co-workers and Brand’s former personal assistant, the court heard from the defendant himself. His Nov. 16, 2023 police interview was played, in which he read out a pre-prepared statement, according to Sky News.
“As I have repeatedly stated publicly and written about extensively, I led a very promiscuous life in the past, which I have spent years openly denouncing,” Brand told the authorities. “I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity.”
Referencing a documentary made by Channel 4’s Dispatches and allegations in The Sunday Times in which Brand was accused of rape and assault — the reports that prompted the police to begin investigating Brand — he said: “On 16 September 2023, a defamatory and fictitious documentary was broadcast in conjunction with the publication of two national newspapers containing false, anonymised allegations which led to unprecedented media reporting. Subsequently both the media and the police publicly invited additional allegations to be made, which has resulted in further encounters to be invented or reimagined.”
In another prepared statement given to police by Brand in December 2023, he says he kissed “hundreds” of people in public in an attempt to be “friendly, consensual and warm” with fans. He added: “There was often physical contact. At live shows, press events, junkets and book signings, I did my best to be accessible, non-discriminatory and loving. I spent a lot of time at these events.”
He says photographs from these encounters are available online. “Everything I did in public once I was famous could be photographed or recorded and end up in the tabloids — I was aware of this,” continued Brand. “I routinely made provocative jokes or comments both with members of the public and during live performances and broadcasts.”
He goes on to say in that same statement that he did, “on occasion find reasons for leaving, or for asking partners in casual sexual encounters to leave, shortly after the experience had concluded.” He told police: “I had sexual encounters in countless locations and scenarios, often with people I had just met.”
This way of life, combined with the “magnitude of the promiscuity deceptively rendered in recent media attacks, accompanied by advertisements for complainants,” have caused “consensual encounters to be unfavourably reframed decades later.”
The trial could last up to six weeks.