Michael Holden
Warning: Graphic content
London: A woman told police that British actor and comedian Russell Brand had grabbed her breasts before dragging her into a toilet at a bar and orally raping her, a London court has heard.
Brand, once one of Britain’s most high-profile broadcasters and the former husband of US singer Katy Perry, is on trial accused of three counts of rape, three of sexual assault and one of indecent assault against six women between 1999 and 2009.
The 51-year-old denies the allegations, and told police after his arrest that he had never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity and the accusers might have re-imagined events.
The third of the six complainants to give evidence alleged on Monday (UK time) that Brand assaulted her after she met him at a party in a London bar in 2004.
Brand had ‘weird grin’
In a tearful police interview played to jurors at Southwark Crown Court, the woman, who worked for MTV, said she had wanted to meet Brand because she had seen him on television and thought he was really funny. But less than a minute after talking to him at the bar, she said, he assaulted her.
“He literally just grabbed my boobs in the middle of the conversation,” she said, adding that he had a weird, maniacal grin on his face as he did it.
Immediately afterwards, while she was in shock and disbelief, she said he grabbed her arm and pulled her to the toilets that were nearby. It was there that he allegedly orally raped her.
“It happened so fast,” she told police. “He said ‘come on, come on, don’t be a spoilsport’,” she recounted, saying he was holding her forcibly by her head and hair. “I just froze. I didn’t know what to do.”
She said while his words were not threatening, the force of the encounter and the look in his eye had been.
She rejected Brand’s lawyer Ian Winter’s suggestion that she had been very excited to meet him, saying she “wasn’t star struck ... I wasn’t a giddy schoolgirl”.
Winter put it to her that had she been groped at the bar or dragged into the toilets, people would have seen.
“Let’s be clear he did not do that to you,” he said of the alleged sexual assault. “You happily accompanied Mr Brand into the lavatory,” he added, a suggestion she rejected.
He said the alleged incident in the toilet was “physically impossible and it did not happen”.
Winter also queried why she had never said she was raped until after a 2023 documentary and press report about Brand, having told friends and her sister he had tried to force himself on her but she had got away.
“I didn’t want people to judge me ... I felt ashamed,” she said.
Last week, the first complainant told the court that Brand had raped her after she met him at a fringe event at the 1999 Labour Party conference in southern England.
The second of the complainants told the court that in 2001 a “wild-eyed” Brand had tried to pull her into the male toilets at MTV Europe, in London, where she
was working.
The trial, which is expected to last about six weeks, continues.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) or the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491.
Reuters