Russell Brand Found Guilty of Rape and Sexual Assault at London Trial

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A London jury has found Russell Brand guilty of rape and sexual assault.

After a four-week, highly publicized trial at Southwark Crown Court, the jury delivered the verdicts on Thursday, finding the disgraced comedian, presenter and actor — best known for film roles in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and St. Trinian’s — guilty on one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault. He was found not guilty of two other rape charges and not guilty of attempted indecent assault.

Justice Bennathan had required a unanimous verdict on all seven charges.

Brand, who was accompanied to the court every day by his wife, Laura, had vehemently denied the claims. The court was apparently completely silent as the verdicts were read out.

The Hollywood Reporter followed the court proceedings closely. The trial heard from all six complainants, one of whom claimed she was raped by Brand in a Bournemouth hotel room after the Labour Party conference in 1999. Another alleged Brand pulled her into a nearby toilet and orally raped her at a bar in Soho in 2004, and a separate accuser said she was anally raped by the star at his Hampstead home in 2009, after the two had consensual vaginal sex. Brand was also accused of dragging an MTV colleague into a bathroom at work in 2001, and exposing himself while traveling with a complainant in a car.

The jury watched police interviews with all of the complainants, whose identities were kept anonymous throughout the trial. The jury was also shown multiple police interviews with Brand, in which he read from a pre-prepared statement. Brand himself gave evidence, maintaining: “I know what ‘no’ means… Consent is a fundamental, essential and necessary and in many ways more important than sex itself.”

Brand said he was unable to persuade anyone to testify on his behalf, confirming his lawyer’s statement that “no one will touch [him] with a bargepole.” His wife, with whom he shares three children, did however tell the court that Brand is a “caring and kind, wonderful father” and that she feels “very seen by him.”

Laura Brand confirmed that her husband had been baptized in April 2024, after the rape and sexual assault allegations against him were published. She said his book, How to Become a Christian in Seven Days — with the subtitle: “May take 50 years of sin and serious fuck-ups to get started” — was published this year.

The court also heard from his former personal assistant, Helen Berger, who had described Brand’s “insane sexual appetite.”

Over the course of a month, the prosecution sought to expose Brand as a “ruthless, sexual predator” who understood that these women weren’t consenting. None of them “sought the limelight” or “any kind of publicity,” said lead prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones in the closing arguments on Friday, Oct. 30. “None of these women has anything to gain — except perhaps some closure,” she said. “[Brand] didn’t listen when I said no, he didn’t listen, he didn’t care… In the rape cases, he just kept on going until he achieved his ultimate aim and ejaculated.”

Brand’s legal team, on the other hand, rejected the claim from the prosecution that his defense was “a lot of half-truths, spun into lies.” Ian Winter had told the court of the “devastating impact” of Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary, in which rape and sexual assault allegations against Brand first came to light and kick-started a police investigation in 2023. “There is nothing random at all about these people coming forward… They have all come forward because they have been brought at the invitation of that program,” said Winter. He also told the court that Channel 4 and Sunday Times journalists “poisoned the well of justice” by prompting these women to speak up.

“Living a highly promiscuous life is entirely lawful however morally distasteful you may find it,” continued Winter in the defense’s closing arguments on Monday, Nov. 2. “Even being manipulative in the pursuit of consensual sex is completely lawful.” Winter said that Brand’s behavior after the alleged attacks shows that he believed the women were consenting. The defense argued that there is no evidence that “Brand is some kind of psychopath who rapes people and thinks it’s normal… The fact he behaved normally during and after all of those ‘rapes’ tells you what you need to know.”

More to come…