Russell Brand, the comedian, actor and conspiracy-minded YouTuber, was sentenced on Monday to 10 and a half years in prison for the rape and sexual assaults that he was convicted of last week.
The presiding judge, Joel Bennathan, said in a sentencing hearing at Southwark Crown Court in London that Mr. Brand, 51, was “a sexual predator” with a “casual, arrogant disregard” for women’s wishes. “Your status protected you until 2023,” when accusations of assault were reported in the British news media, the judge said.
Under British sentencing guidelines, Mr. Bennathan could have sentenced Mr. Brand to life in prison for the rape conviction, but judges have significant leeway in issuing sentences, and those for rape are typically four to 19 years.
The decision came four days after a jury found Mr. Brand guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, in a trial in which six women testified about episodes that they said occurred between 2004 and 2009.
Mr. Brand denied all of the charges and said that either the events had not occurred or that the women were reinterpreting consensual sexual acts. The jury found Mr. Brand not guilty of two other counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault.
Under British law, anyone who makes sexual assault accusations has lifelong anonymity outside the courtroom regardless of a jury’s verdict.
The rape charge he was convicted of concerned an encounter in 1999. The woman in question told the jury that she had gone to Mr. Brand’s house for consensual vaginal sex, but that Mr. Brand had at one point removed his condom and had anal sex with her without her consent, ignoring her pleas to stop and leaving her bleeding.
The three sexual assault convictions included a 2004 episode in which Mr. Brand grabbed a woman’s breasts at a London bar within a minute of their meeting; a 2005 episode in which he pinned a woman against a wall at a radio station and groped her; and a 2009 episode in which Mr. Brand’s team told a woman who was working with him that he would continue only if she gave him a massage, after which he thrust his face into her lap.
In his judgment, Mr. Bennathan said that Mr. Brand had told “a series of lies” in court.
During Monday’s hearing, the woman in the 2004 episode appeared in court, concealed by a screen, and said that her encounter with the comedian had caused her to lose “any love for myself for a long time.” She added that “it was impossible to escape” Mr. Brand because of his media profile, and that she often saw him “being celebrated for his disgusting behavior against women like it was all a joke.”
The woman he was convicted of raping said in a statement read out to the court that before the episode she had aspired to pursue stand-up comedy, but afterward she “felt unable to continue, because the thought of encountering Russell Brand, or even hearing his name, caused me anxiety and fear.” She said she had turned to alcohol to block out her “feelings and memories” of the rape.
The woman Mr. Brand was convicted of assaulting in 2005 described him in her statement as “a sexual predator who has no remorse for how his behavior has impacted my life.” She added, “I just hope that he is not allowed to hurt any more women.”
Ian Winter, Mr. Brown’s lawyer, told the court that Mr. Brand was “a fundamentally different person now” compared with who he was at time of the offenses. Mr. Winter said that Mr. Brand’s behavior at the time was perhaps a “consequence” of his increasing fame.
Mr. Winter also asked the judge to take into account Mr. Brand’s family, including his three young children. “We invite mercy,” the lawyer said, urging the judge to also consider Mr. Brand’s charitable work helping people recover from addiction.
In April, Mr. Brand said in an interview with Piers Morgan, the former newspaper editor, that he would accept his fate if he received a prison sentence, because it would mean God had decided on that path for him. “That’s the deal we’ve got,” Mr. Brand said.
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