Russell Brand: a predator finally brought to justice

Sixteen years ago, Russell Brand posed a question to the readers of his memoir: “What kind of man was I? Treating women in this way? If this is what I am telling you, can you imagine what’s being left out?” Today, the question looks chilling – and the public has a good idea of its answer, said The Times.

On Monday, the 51-year-old comedian-turned-Christian-influencer was sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in jail, for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others, between 2004 and 2009. A “charismatic, unruly figure” known at the peak of his career for his voracious sexual appetite, Brand had protected his persona with a “cheeky end-of-the-pier veneer”; but during his trial, the evidence of the six women who’d agreed to testify against him made it clear that his ostensible charm could disappear in an instant.

One of the women had, aged 21, been invited to his home where she consented to vaginal sex. In bed, he turned her over, pinned her down, removed his condom and anally raped her – though she told him it hurt, and begged him to stop. When it was over, he ordered her to clean up her “mess” (there was blood and other matter on the sheets), then switched on the TV, and got an assistant to show her out. He stored her number in his phone under “T for tart”.

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In plain sight

It is being said that Brand was like Jimmy Savile – a predator hiding in plain sight, said John Sturgis in The Spectator. Yet he was not hiding. In his pomp, he’d revelled in his “swordsman” reputation. The Sun named him “Shagger of the Year” three times.

And he was brazen about his mistreatment of women, said Jessica Barrett in The Independent. In his bestselling memoir of 2007, “My Booky Wook”, he recalled groping girls at school – “every female was a potential target” – and described later altercations in which he’d spat in the face of a lap dancer and smashed the phone of a prostitute. In his standup routines in that era, he “joked” about picking up fans for sex, and about preferring fellatio when the “mascara runs a little” – an echo of the gagging that one witness spoke of in court (he was acquitted of the charge of having dragged her into a toilet and forced her into oral sex).

On his BBC radio show in 2007, Brand rang Savile and agreed to send over his assistant, naked, to give him a massage, said Rosamund Urwin in The Times. On another occasion, he laughed on the show about exposing his penis to a woman. In 2008, he went too far when he and Jonathan Ross rang the actor Andrew Sachs, and left him lewd messages about his granddaughter.

After that, Brand lost his job at the BBC, but he had such a large fanbase that industry bosses in the UK and the US continued to turn a blind eye to the dark rumours about him, and even public warnings. Dannii Minogue had called Brand “a vile predator” who’d not “take no for an answer” back in 2006. In 2023, after criminal allegations were finally revealed by a Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4 investigation, both the BBC and Channel 4 apologised for not addressing earlier complaints about Brand. But at the height of his fame, he’d seemingly been viewed as “the talent”, an asset too valuable to jeopardise.

‘Fake messiah’

Certainly, TV bosses have questions to answer about Brand’s behaviour and the culture that facilitated it, said Jawad Iqbal in The Spectator: many female BBC employees said they’d been too scared to speak up. The allegations revealed this week against David Walliams will raise more.

But Brand had other enablers, including the high-profile left-wing progressives who fêted him when – his Hollywood career having stalled – he reinvented himself as a socialist revolutionary. The Guardian published his writings, and in 2013 he guest edited The New Statesman (and was photographed with its staff as the Jesus figure in a recreation of da Vinci’s “Last Supper”). His political ideas were “daft”, said John Rentoul in The Independent, yet even Labour leader Ed Miliband courted the “fake messiah” in 2015, in an effort to win the youth vote.

In court, Brand’s lawyer, Ian Winter, resorted to age-old tactics to discredit his accusers, said Helen Rumbelow in The Times: he asked why they’d not screamed or fought back, or immediately gone to the police. It’s known that women are often paralysed by shock or fear in such cases. As for not going to the police, both Brand’s history of getting away with it, owing to his A-list status, and the crime statistics, speak to that. Only 1% of rapes that are reported end in a conviction. Why would a woman who had been a fan of her celebrity attacker, or flirted with him, or previously consented to sex with him, expect to be one of the tiny minority whose case gets to court?

It’s a step forward that the jury was not swayed by Winter’s tactics, and accepted that consent can be withdrawn at any time. But the fact is, it still required the press to find other victims and air allegations to embolden a few “heroic” women to come forward, and help bring this rapist to justice.