Russell Brand took the stand in a London court on Wednesday, giving evidence for the first time in a trial in which the popular YouTuber faces seven charges, including rape and sexual assault.
Mr. Brand’s appearance, at Southwark Crown Court, comes in the third week of a trial in which prosecutors have described the onetime comedian and actor as a “ruthless” sexual predator who either raped or assaulted six women, in episodes that prosecutors say occurred in Britain between 1999 and 2009, when he was 24 to 34 years old.
Mr. Brand, now 51, has pleaded not guilty to the seven charges and has maintained his innocence in YouTube videos over the past year.
Ian Winter, Mr. Brand’s lawyer, started the session by asking the former comedian if he had assaulted each woman in the case. “No!” Mr. Brand replied each time, his hands clasped behind his back.
Mr. Brand said the accusations against him had had a “devastating” effect on his life, and he concurred when Mr. Winter offered that former friends who could have spoken in Mr. Brand’s defense would now “not touch him with a barge pole.”
Mr. Brand said that during four police interviews about each accusation, he did not remember meeting any of the women but had now taken steps to jog his memory.
In court on Tuesday, the prosecution had read out the statements Mr. Brand made in the police interviews. In each, Mr. Brand said that he had once led “a very promiscuous life” — behavior that he has since denounced. He added that he had “sexual encounters in countless locations and scenarios often with people I had just met,” but insisted that those events were “always consensual.”
Throughout the trial, Mr. Brand has continued posting videos to his YouTube channel. In one, on Oct. 18, he discussed how his Christian faith was helping him during the trial. “I believe in you, God,” Mr. Brand said: “I believe in your truth and justice.”
For most of the trial’s first two weeks, the jury heard testimony from the six women who say that Mr. Brand either assaulted or raped them. The women’s original video interviews with the police were played to the court, and lawyers from the two sides questioned each woman under oath in the courtroom.
In Britain, anyone who makes sexual assault accusations is granted lifelong anonymity outside the courtroom, and news outlets are not allowed to report any information that might identify them.
Among those to give evidence, one woman told the court that Mr. Brand raped her in 1999 after she invited him to her hotel room during a conference for a British political party. The woman said she had initially thought Mr. Brand was gay. “I felt sexually safe with him,” she said.
Ian Winter, Mr. Brand’s lawyer, suggested to the woman that she actually “fell under” Mr. Brand’s spell and had since reimagined the encounter. “He persuaded you to have sex, and you regret it,” Mr. Winter said.
Another woman, a comedy fan, told the court that she had been having consensual vaginal sex with Mr. Brand and then he anally raped her despite her pleas for him to cease. “I said, ‘Can you stop?” she recalled in a police interview played to the court: “I said it repeatedly.”
Afterward, the woman said, Mr. Brand told her to “clear up the mess” she had made on his bed and soon left for a gig.
The woman told several friends, colleagues and family members about the episode in the days and weeks afterward, and some of them were called as witnesses or gave statements in the trial. One friend relayed to the court that the woman said Mr. Brand had left her bleeding and in severe pain, adding, “She couldn’t sit down.” A former colleague told the court that she had advised the woman to report the episode to the police, but the woman declined to, saying, “No one will believe me.”
In cross-examination, Mr. Winter suggested that the woman was “obsessed” with Mr. Brand and had undergone “a beastly experience” but a consensual one.
A third woman said in her police interview, which was played to the jury, that she and Mr. Brand had met at a party in a bar in 2004. After a minute of regular conversation, she said, he suddenly groped her breasts and then “dragged” her into a bathroom stall, locked its door, stood on the toilet seat and forced her to give him oral sex.
Afterward, the woman told the police that Mr. Brand had said, “I guess we should swap numbers now.”
Mr. Winter, in cross-examination, suggested to the woman that an oral rape with Mr. Brand standing on a toilet seat was “physically impossible and it did not happen.”
On a procedural note on Tuesday, the judge said he had decided there was insufficient evidence for the jury to consider one of the charges, of indecent assault. The judge said the jury would instead consider a charge of attempted indecent assault for the same episode in which Mr. Brand is accused of trying to drag a woman into a restroom for sexual contact.
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