Russell Brand has arrived for his day in court in London.
Brand, who nearly two years ago was the subject of a Channel 4 and The Times exposé, has been charged with rape, indecent assault and sexual assault by London’s Metropolitan Police.
Brand is currently living in the U.S. and has been seen several times at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, but the comedian and TV host said after he was charged that he is “incredibly grateful” to be able to defend the charges in court.
The charges against Brand relate to four separate women. It has been alleged that Brand raped a woman in Bournemouth in 1999; indecently assaulted a woman in 2001 in Westminster, London; orally raped and sexually assaulted a woman in Westminster in 2004; and between 2004 and 2005 sexually assaulted a woman, also in Westminster.
According to reports, court documents yesterday revealed Brand is accused of indecently assaulting one woman in 2001 by allegedly “grabbing her arm and dragging her towards a male toilet” amongst others.
Upon the charges being announced, the one-time Forgetting Sarah Marshall star, whose resident address is in Oxfordshire, said he was a “drug addict, sex addict and an imbecile” during his youth, but he was never a rapist. “I’ve never engaged in non-consensual activity. I pray that you can see that by looking in my eyes,” he told his social media followers last month.
The revelations about Brand led to much anger and industry introspection. Since then, the BBC, Channel 4 and Big Brother producer Banijay have all led internal probes, having worked with Brand on shows up until late last decade. All these probes have led to apologies and further revelations. The most recent report from the BBC found that staff at the UK broadcaster’s L.A. bureau had “joked about” an incident in which the star was alleged to have exposed himself to a woman in a bathroom. Channel 4’s report, published almost exactly a year ago, unearthed “two new worrying allegations” against Brand, who had worked on Celebrity Bake Off as recently as 2018.
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