A British prosecutor described the popular YouTuber Russell Brand as “ruthless,” “manipulative” and a “sexual predator” as she outlined the legal case against him in a London courtroom on Wednesday.
Riel Karmy-Jones, the lead prosecutor for the case, told the court that “to the defendant, women were simply a means to an end — that end being groping them, sexually or indecently assaulting them or vaginally, orally or anally raping them.”
Mr. Brand, a onetime comedy and movie star, has pleaded not guilty to all seven charges in the case. Before the trial, he repeatedly said in videos posted to his social media and in media interviews that he had never engaged in nonconsensual sexual activity.
The charges against him include sexual assault and indecent assault as well as rape. The prosecution says the incidents involved six women and took place in Britain between 1999 and 2009.
During her opening statement, Ms. Karmy-Jones outlined the accusations against Mr. Brand, 51. In Britain, anyone who makes sexual assault accusations has the right to lifelong anonymity, so news outlets are not allowed to report any details that might identify the accusers.
Ms. Karmy-Jones told the court that the first rape occurred in 1999, before Mr. Brand was famous, after he performed a comedy revue at a British political party conference.
The accuser told the police that she had attended Mr. Brand’s performance, according to the prosecutor, and that they chatted afterward about political issues. Ms. Karmy-Jones said the woman initially thought that Mr. Brand was gay and “perhaps naïvely” invited him back to her hotel room to continue talking.
At one point, the prosecutor said, the woman went to the bathroom and came out to find Mr. Brand shirtless. Shortly afterward, Ms. Karmy-Jones said, Mr. Brand pushed the woman onto a bed and started “doing things with his tongue that were horrible, like a lizard.”
The woman knew “there was nothing she could do” to stop Mr. Brand going further, Ms. Karmy-Jones said, adding that Mr. Brand then raped the woman and afterward “behaved as if nothing had happened.”
“He got up and got dressed, wrote his email address down and showered her with compliments, apologizing for how quick things had been,” Ms. Karmy-Jones said. The woman told the police that she did not report the episode at the time, partly because she felt it was her fault, the prosecutor said.
Ms. Karmy-Jones said the second episode, an indecent assault, occurred in 2001 and involved Mr. Brand’s grabbing a woman he had just met at the offices of a TV company and trying to pull her into a bathroom, leaving her “bewildered and shocked by what had happened.” Ms. Karmy-Jones said the woman was unsure about whether it was an assault and therefore did not report it to the police until over 20 years later.
After describing that accusation, Ms. Karmy-Jones said that in 2004, Mr. Brand met a woman at a birthday party at a bar and “within a very short time, less than a minute,” “lunged forward” and grabbed the woman’s breasts while having a “big, weird grin” across his face. Mr. Brand then pulled the woman by her forearm into a nearby bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him, Ms. Karmy-Jones said.
Afterward, Ms. Karmy-Jones said, Mr. Brand suggested that the pair “swap telephone numbers — like this was all normal.” Later that night, in a car, the prosecutor said, Mr. Brand pulled his penis out of his pants and told the woman to “come on, suck it.” When the woman refused, the prosecutor said, he “laughed but appeared at that point to accept her refusal.”
After the episode, the woman called a former boyfriend and told him that Mr. Brand had tried to assault her, the prosecutor said. Ms. Karmy-Jones said the woman did not go to the police because she “thought that people would think it had been her fault.”
Another woman who has accused Mr. Brand of assaulting her said he did so at a radio station immediately after the two met, pushing her up against a wall, kissing her and aggressively groping her as members of Mr. Brand’s entourage watched, the prosecutor said. Ms. Karmy-Jones said the woman had described the assault as “rough, fast and frenzied” and said that it had left her “in complete disbelief that not one of the people with Mr. Brand had tried to help her or to stop it.”
As Ms. Karmy-Jones spoke, Mr. Brand, wearing a black suit and a long white cravat, sat in a glass box at the back of the room and listened intently. Upon arriving at the court on Wednesday morning, he had told reporters waiting outside that he was feeling “blessed” as well as “concerned but hopeful that this process will lead to good outcomes for everyone involved.”
The trial is scheduled to last up to 10 weeks.
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