Russell Brand , Guilty! Rape and Sexual Assault

Russell Brand arriving at the London court this week.Credit...Leon Neal/Getty Images

 By Alex Marshall

Reporting from Southwark Crown Court in London

New York Times

Russell Brand, the popular conspiracy-minded YouTuber who first found fame as a comedy and acting star, was found guilty in a London court on Thursday of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault.

He was found not guilty of two other counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault.

The jury, at Southwark Crown Court in London, took about eight and a half hours to reach its unanimous decisions, which concerned episodes that prosecutors said involved six women and occurred between 1999 and 2009, a period when Mr. Brand was becoming a public figure.

The judge, Joel Bennathan, said he would sentence Mr. Brand, 51, to “significant custodial time” on Monday and denied him bail. Under British sentencing guidelines for rape, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment, although a more typical prison term is four to 19 years.

Mr. Brand could also face further legal challenges related to his past sexual behavior. A spokeswoman for London’s police said in an emailed statement after the verdicts that officers had questioned Mr. Brand about two further accusations of rape and submitted files to prosecutors. He has also faced a civil action in the United States. 

Mr. Brand’s legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Russell Brand and Laura Brand hold hands while walking on a street.

In the trial, only Mr. Brand’s wife, Laura, gave in-person evidence in his defense.Credit...Hannah Mckay/Reuters

As the jury’s foreman announced the verdicts, Mr. Brand stood impassively in a glass box reserved for defendants at the back of the courtroom.

The jury’s decisions came just over three years after The Times of London, The Sunday Times and the prominent British television program “Dispatches” published a joint investigation into Mr. Brand’s past behavior, in which four women accused the comedian of sexual assault, including one accusation of rape.

Those accusations prompted some of Mr. Brand’s supporters to rally around him, including Donald Trump Jr., and Elon Musk, who wrote on X: “I support Russell Brand. That man is not evil.” Conservative personalities like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly and Charlie Kirk continued to express support after the police charged Mr. Brand.

Although the London trial did not include any of the women in the 2023 media investigation, some of the accusers in the trial told the court that they had come forward after seeing the coverage. 

In October, Ian Winter, Mr. Brand’s lawyer, argued in a pretrial hearing that Mr. Brand could not receive a fair hearing because the news media had portrayed him as a rapist, and because the coverage had made “it impossible to persuade witnesses” to give evidence on Mr. Brand’s behalf. The judge dismissed that application, saying that a jury could be trusted to consider the accusations put before it.

In the trial, only Mr. Brand’s wife, Laura, gave in-person evidence in his defense.

During the trial, prosecutors called Mr. Brand a “ruthless” sexual predator who once considered women “simply a means to an end.” Then the jury heard testimony from the six women who said that Mr. Brand had assaulted or raped them, sometimes only moments after they had met him.

In Britain, anyone who makes sexual assault accusations is granted lifelong anonymity outside the courtroom regardless of a jury’s verdict.

Russell Brand, shirtless and wearing white pants and a belt, raises an upturned hand toward the camera.

Mr. Brand in a London Metropolitan Police handout photo, from 1999, that was taken by one of the complainants and shown during his trial.Credit...Metropolitan Police

The guilty verdict for rape concerned a 2009 episode in which a woman said in a police interview played in court that she had gone to Mr. Brand’s home expecting to have consensual vaginal sex. But during intercourse, she said, he removed his condom and began having anal sex with her.

She told the court that she was initially so shocked that she couldn’t breathe, but then managed to ask him to cease. “I said, ‘Can you stop?’” she added: “I said it repeatedly.” 

The woman told numerous people after the episode that Mr. Brand had assaulted her, some of whom testified in court. She added that Mr. Brand had refused her pleas and left her bleeding and in pain.

Mr. Brand testified that they had consensual anal sex and that she had never told him to stop during the encounter.

The other guilty verdicts concerned episodes throughout Brand’s rise to fame. One woman told the jury that in 2005 Mr. Brand had pinned her against a wall and kissed and groped her as members of his entourage looked on.

“It happened in a flash,” the woman said. “There wasn’t time for me to even understand what was going on.”

Mr. Brand denied that the encounter had occurred.

In another case, a woman told the jury that while working on a project with Mr. Brand in 2009, members of his team told her that he would continue working only if she gave him a massage. The woman said that she had initially thought the request was a joke, but that Mr. Brand then put his head in her lap.

Mr. Brand testified that he did not recall the episode, but that if he had asked for a massage it would not have been of a sexual nature. 

The jury gave two verdicts concerning a woman who testified that in 2024 she met Mr. Brand at a party and after a minute of conversation — without “any sexual flirting or anything like that” — Mr. Brand suddenly grabbed her breasts and then pulled her into a bathroom stall and forced her to give him oral sex.

Mr. Brand testified that he had invited the woman “into the lavatory to fool around,” and said that they did not have oral sex. The jury found Mr. Brand guilty of sexual assault in that case, but not guilty of rape.

In the trial, Mr. Brand mostly gave short answers when testifying. He told the jury that he had “misused” his fame to obtain sex but had always obtained consent, which he said was “fundamental, essential, necessary.”

Today, Mr. Brand is best known as a YouTuber — his channel has over 6.6 million subscribers — and he also posts clips to his 10 million followers on X. But in the early 2000s he was one of Britain’s most popular comedians, and a regular television and radio presenter, known for a distinctive look of wild hair and tight jeans.

The charges in the trial covered a period from 1999, when Brand was an aspiring comedian, to August 2009, just months after he performed his comedy show “Scandalous” to an audience of 16,000 in London.

 

During the period, Mr. Brand also started becoming better known outside Britain. A starring role in the 2008 movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” brought him recognition in the United States, and he hosted the MTV Video Music Awards that year and in 2009.

Russell Brand speaks into a microphone while standing on a stage in front of a cheering crowd.

Mr. Brand hosting the MTV Video Music Awards in New York in 2009.Credit...Christopher Polk/Getty 

In the early 2000s, Mr. Brand openly discussed his addictions onstage, including to sex. In his 2007 memoir, “My Booky Wook,” he wrote that his manager had once sent him to a sex addiction clinic, in part because the comedian was becoming so well known for his “carnal overindulgences” that it was causing him “professional difficulties.”

During that period, Britain’s tabloid newspapers, and many comedy audiences, celebrated Mr. Brand’s promiscuity and lewd humor. The Sun, a popular tabloid, named Mr. Brand “shagger of the year” several times because of the amount of sex he was having.

In more recent years, Mr. Brand has become better known for his conspiracy-minded YouTube videos aimed at an American audience, sometimes featuring interviews with prominent conservative politicians and commentators. In recent months, those videos have also focused on Mr. Brand’s Christian faith, including with the comedian and his wife posting weekly “Sunday Service” clips.