‘I couldn’t breathe’, Russell Brand’s alleged sex assault victim says

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London (AFP) — A woman allegedly raped by British comedian Russell Brand more than two decades ago recalled how she was left scared and “felt dirty” after being attacked in her hotel room.

The jury at a London trial was on Thursday shown the video of a 2023 police interview where she accused Brand of raping her in Bournemouth, southern England, in 1999 when he was acting in a theatre show at the Labour Party Conference.

“I’m reporting that Russell Brand did rape me,” she says in the recorded interview played in court.

The woman, who has not been identified, said she had chatted with Brand at his show, and then suggested they continue in her hotel room.

When she returned from the toilet, he had stripped to tight underpants, she said, telling the police she was “taken aback, shocked”.

The woman said Brand then pushed her onto the bed and “I’m thinking no, no, but I was really scared”.

“I do remember saying ‘no, what are you doing?'”, she said, estimating she weighed 6.5 or 7 stone (91-98 pounds) while Brand was “really heavy, I couldn’t even breathe”.

Brand, 51, who is also a former Hollywood actor and was briefly married to pop star Katy Perry, denies all seven charges involving six women and has pleaded not guilty.

His trial began amid a storm of media attention and in their opening statement the prosecution on Wednesday accused him of being a “sexual predator” who was “ruthless” and “manipulative”.

The jury at London’s Southwark Court will hear testimony from the six women making allegations dating between 1999 and 2009 when Brand was rising to fame.

Brand, who has rebranded himself as a faith-based online commentator and guru, watched the first woman’s evidence on a screen in his glass-walled dock.

She was later to testify in court from behind a screen.

The woman told police she came forward after watching a 2023 British television documentary.

Judge Joel Bennathan told the jury all six women in the case went to the police after seeing this documentary, but cautioned it presented the allegations in a “one-sided” way.

– ‘Lizard-like’ –

Brand “groped me,” the woman said in the police’s 2023 recorded interview, adding she had tried to stop him kissing her.

“I didn’t want his mouth on mine, I didn’t want his tongue … it was horrible, it was lizard-like,” she said.

Then Brand “was pulling my trousers down … and he was inside me, it was not nice, it was painful,” she said.

“He just wanted to ejaculate and that’s what he did,” she said, saying she felt “frozen” and had her eyes shut.

Afterwards, Brand “didn’t think he did anything wrong, he just got up”, she said,

She wept as she told police: “It made me feel so dirty and I felt it was my fault.”

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