Russell Brand was sentenced on Monday to 10 years and six months in prison for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others in offences against four women between 2004 and 2009. Mr Justice Bennathan handed down the sentence at Southwark Crown Court in London, in sentencing remarks that opened by telling Brand what he had become as his fame grew about 20 years ago.
“About 20 years ago, Russell Brand, you were becoming famous. You were clever and, in many people’s eyes, funny and charismatic. You had also become a sexual predator.”
The judge gave Brand nine years for the rape. For the three sexual assaults he imposed nine months, 18 months and eight months, those terms to run at the same time as each other but on top of the rape sentence, which is how the total reached 10 years and six months. The days Brand has already spent in custody will count. He will serve two-thirds of the sentence before release on licence, and he will be subject to the notification requirements of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 indefinitely.
Four offences over five years
The first assault, in July 2004, happened at a party. A professional woman who thought Brand was funny and wanted to meet him was introduced to him, and he grabbed her breasts as she sat talking to him. The judge said the offence showed a casual, arrogant disregard of any woman’s right to say no, and that the upset it caused her went well beyond what would normally follow from an offence of its kind.
Around the same time, Brand assaulted a newsreader at a London radio station where she was doing her job. He grabbed her face, kissed her and pushed her back against a wall in front of three men and a woman who did nothing, the judge said. She wrote in her victim impact statement of being startled every time she heard his voice on television and of the damage the attack did to her relationships with male colleagues.
In spring 2009, Brand raped a 21-year-old fan at his house. She had consented to one kind of sex. He removed the condom without her agreement and forced himself on her another way, ignoring her when she asked him to stop, and then told her the mess on the bed was hers to clear up. She took two to three months off work, gave up the career she had started, and still struggles to trust people, the judge said.
The last offence came towards the end of 2009, on the set of an advertisement for a DVD of Brand’s work. A woman working for a major television company was told Brand would not go on unless she gave him a massage. When she reluctantly agreed, he put his face in her lap and then insulted her in front of the men with him. She wrote of losing her trust in people and not feeling safe at work.
His status protected him until 2023
The judge said Brand’s status protected him until journalists collected and published the allegations in 2023, in a Channel 4 documentary and in articles in the Times newspapers, and that those reports led women to come forward with accounts of what he had done years before. He stressed that the complainants’ names are legally protected, and he closed by paying tribute to the women who gave evidence.
“I pause to pay tribute to the determination and bravery of all the women whose evidence I have been recounting.”
“Whatever women wear, wherever they go, indeed whatever they drink, they retain the right to say no and to demand justice from the criminal courts when sexual predators like you, Russell Brand, act without their consent.”
A year off for mitigation
Brand had no significant previous convictions, 17 years had passed since the last offence, and he had since done good work helping people wrestling with addiction, often by funding treatment. The judge said that would not normally carry much weight in a case like this, but he refused to disregard it altogether and cut a year from the sentence he would otherwise have given for the rape.
NPR reported that Brand, 51, denies all the charges and has said he never had non-consensual sex. In his evidence at trial, Brand said he had never touched a woman sexually without her consent. In light of the jury’s verdicts, the judge said, that was one of a series of lies he told.
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