A fourth woman testifying against Russell Brand in his ongoing rape and sexual assault trial has described his alleged attack on her as “frenzied” and “violent.”
The Hollywood Reporter has been closely following the proceedings at London’s Southwark Crown Court over the last week. The disgraced presenter and comedian — also star of St Trinian’s and Forgetting Sarah Marshall — is accused of three counts of rape, three charges of sexual assault and one allegation of indecent assault, with six women alleging crimes dating from 1999 to 2009. He denies all of the claims, which were presented in depth by lead prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones on Oct. 14.
The court heard from a third woman on Monday, who recalled her encounter with Brand in a bar in Soho in 2004, where she says he dragged her into the toilets and orally raped her. “If I do this, maybe he won’t try to rape me further,” she said she remembered thinking. “He won’t try to invade my body … Just do what he wants and get out of here, and then it’s done. I closed my eyes and tried to not be there.” British press also reported that the police interview, conducted in 2023 after the woman read of allegations against Brand in the press and came forward, showed the officer asking what she was wearing during the attack.
On Tuesday, the fourth, fifth and sixth complainants gave evidence against Brand. The fourth woman alleges that he sexually assaulted her at the Choice FM radio studios in London in the mid-2000s, according to BBC News.
She said she emerged from a small room in the building to find Brand. “He grabbed me by my face, started to kiss me, and when he was kissing me he started pushing me — his body against me,” the woman told the jury. “It was very frenzied.”
The accuser sat behind a screen to protect her anonymity, the BBC also said, with Brand in his usual seat and his wife, Laura Gallacher, nearby. Sky News reported on Tuesday that Gallacher shook her head and raised her eyebrows during the morning’s proceedings.
The fourth accuser went on and alleged the kiss was “sloppy” and “very, very rough.” The woman said she pushed him and told him to “fuck off.” She continued: “It was rough. His whole body was pressed against me … his hands were moving up and down so much it was violent. It was hard, and he just wasn’t stopping,” she said.
She recalled feeling “dirty, shocked, stunned and shaken” by the encounter. Brand’s head defense lawyer Ian Winter asked why she didn’t come forward at the time, to which the complainant replied about the workplace culture then: “Women were rated by colleagues on what we were wearing, how we looked. … I did not feel at that stage there was someone I could go and talk to.” She became upset as she remembered thinking no one would believe her. “I was literally attacked when I was at work by someone who ‘was a face,'” she said. Secondly, “I could lose my job, and I have a mortgage to pay.”
In the afternoon, the fifth complainant’s police interview played for the jury. She described meeting Brand after one of his gigs at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2009, when she was in her early 20s. She was asked by his security to go upstairs for a drink with the comedian and engaged in a consensual threesome in his dressing room, said the complainant. She expected never to hear from him again.
This woman later visited him at his house where, she wanted to make clear, “I was expecting to have sex with him.” After consensual vaginal sex — which she described as “very awkward” — Brand turned her onto her front and anally raped her and “pushed her face down onto the pillow.” She recalled feeling as though “she couldn’t speak or breathe” and said she was in pain. When finally able to speak, the woman alleges she told Brand to stop “a few times quietly and then really loudly.”
The anal rape lasted “minutes,” and Brand “looked absolutely fucking horrified” when it was over, she said. She expected him to apologize, but alleges he only told her: “‘You need to clear up the mess you made.'” The complainant said Brand left the room five minutes after the attack. She says she suffered an anal tear and was terrified she could have contracted HIV, adding that her father was “devastated” upon hearing her experience because he bought the original gig tickets.
The jury also heard details of the sixth complainant’s allegations on Tuesday. She spoke from behind a screen and said the incident took place in 2009 when she worked at Channel 4. She’d met Brand “briefly” once before. Brand had become unhappy as the day went on and demanded a massage, she alleged.
Brand “lay his head into [her] lap,” while they recorded a project at Channel 4 offices, she said. “His left shoulder was leaning against my leg, and his head was in my lap.” She recalled his nose and mouth “were in my vaginal area… It was a weird position for a massage to be in, that’s for sure.”
Male colleagues of Brand’s were in the room, according to the complainant. She hoped they would help her. But they gestured to her as if to say, “‘Well, are you going to do it?'” she said. Explaining that she just wanted to “get [Brand] off her,” she attempted to massage him. The men in the room allegedly laughed when she said Brand was “bony,” but Brand didn’t laugh.
During the encounter, this sixth complainant also alleges Brand began trying to “distract” attention. She did an impression of him, according to Sky’s court reporters, and said in a high-pitched voice: “‘I’m a calculator, look at me, look at me.'” Reportedly, Brand’s wife pursed her lips and looked towards him at this moment, “as if trying to catch his eye,” Sky said.
Brand’s lawyer Winter told the court that the alleged victim gave differing accounts of what she was wearing at the time. His client says if any of the encounters did take place, they were all consensual.
The trial could last up to six weeks.