Russell Brand's police interviews released following guilty rape verdict

Let me just bring you some big breaking news here. The comedian and entertainer and actor Russell Brand has been found guilty at Southern Crown Court of one rape and three counts of sexual assault in total during his show business career. In the course of the verdicts, he was found not guilty on a couple of other indecent assault and sexual assault allegations. When he was being questioned by police in December back in 2023, Russell Brand read a pre-prepared statement to detectives. As I've repeatedly stated publicly and written about extensively, I led a very promiscuous life in the past which I've spent years openly denouncing. I've never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity. On the 16th of September 2023, a defamatory and fictitious documentary was broadcast in conjunction with the publication of two national newspapers containing false anonymized allegations which led to unprecedented media reporting. Subsequently, both the media and the police publicly invited additional allegations to be made, which has resulted in further encounters being invented or reimagined. At present, I do not recall the names of the complainants or meeting them. However, it is entirely possible that I may have encountered them and that we may have engaged in consensual sexual activity or physical contact that has been since reimagined. The allegations that you are interviewing me... About, relate to events that allegedly took place between 24 and 16 years ago. After I was provided with a short summary of these allegations in advance of this interview, my solicitors wrote on my behalf with questions seeking information and clarification that the majority of these questions remain unanswered. Since December 13, 2002, I've been entirely drink and drug free to the present day. In the past, my engagement with interested members of the public was friendly, consensual and warm. There was often physical contact at live shows, press events, junkets and book signings. I did my best to be accessible, non-discriminatory and loving. I spent a lot of time at these events. I've shared kisses with hundreds of members of the public during press events and photos of many such kisses in front of people, in front of hundreds of people who are available online. Everything I did in public once I was famous could be photographed or recorded and end up in the tabloids. I was aware of this. I routinely made provocative jokes or comments with members of the public during live performances and broadcasts. I did on occasion find reasons for leaving or asking partners in casual sexual encounters to leave shortly after the experience had concluded. I've had sexual encounters in countless locations and scenarios, often with people I just met. The way of life that I've described, the magnitude of the promiscuity deceptively rendered in recent media attacks, accompanied by advertisements for complainants, have caused consensual encounters to be unfavourably reframed decades later. As I stated at the outset, I've never engaged in any non-consensual sexual activity. It is even more apparent from the additional disclosure He provided on the 10th of January 2024 that these encounters have been invented or reimagined. I understand that you have now asked further questions. I do not intend to respond to your questions without sufficient time to consider the information to answer accurately. I will therefore listen to your questions, but I will not be providing further responses at this time. Mr. Brown noticed that the condom he had been wearing had been removed at some point before the anal rape and was now on the floor. Mr. Brand then told her to clean up the mess on the bed and he left the room. The male who had answered the door to her then entered the room and told her she had to leave as Mr Brand had to perform in another show that evening. She then left and was dropped off to Hampstead Tube by the same driver. What is your response to this allegation? I have nothing further to add at this time. What exercises me most here and what I want to talk to you about this hour is the backdrop. In our country, let's just keep it to the UK. We know the wider world has similar problems, but let's keep it to the UK, the backdrop in our country. Both judicially and societally, I believe, enables rape and sexual assault to happen and enables rapists to constantly get away with it and predators and offenders to constantly get away with it. I think we would be doing victims an injustice to think it is only about men like Russell Brand. There are lots of men like Russell Brand and they're just not. On the television, they're not quite as noisy and in your face necessarily. It isn't just about men in powerful positions feeling they can get away with rape and sexual assault. An awful lot of men feel they can get away with rape and sexual assault and and even innocent people enable it. Does that mean they're not innocent? I don't know. But the the the way in which people around predatory men enable them, we've seen it in this case. I'm sure you've seen it in your own lives as well. Also enables rape, but do men generally, but do men in powerful positions feel like they can get away with this, things like rape and sexual assault, because there simply is rarely any comeuppance for them. Criminal. prosecutions here and successful prosecutions in the Russell Brand case and he is going to face a jail sentence according to the judge. Just to bring you more additional news that's broken since the end of the trial. Russell Brand has been accused of raping two more women including a 16 year old school girl and could face further criminal charges. It was revealed in previous hearings at Southwark Crown Court but couldn't be reported at Let me just reiterate that in that statement from Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy from the Metropolitan. Police service, he said, if anyone else has been a victim or thinks they may have been a victim of rape or serious sexual assault, to come forward and speak to them. And separately in that statement, they mean in relation to Russell Brand, but they also mean at all. You'll be listened to, you'll be supported and you will be treated with dignity and respect. They say. Helen Hoddenot, whose report we've just had there, joins me live from Southwark Crown Court. So, Helen, for people just tuning in, just bring us up to speed on what's happened this afternoon. So Russell Brand has just been found guilty of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault here at Southwark Crown Court this afternoon. The court was called back in just after lunch, after just over nine hours of deliberation by the jury. And we were told at that point that they had reached a unanimous verdict on all counts. Russell Brand held his wife's hand as they both walked into the courtroom to hear that. And there was Total silence as one by one, the foreman of the jury was asked to read out what their unanimous verdicts were. And Russell Brand stood still and straight in the dock while this was taking place. On count one, he was found not guilty of raping a woman in Bournemouth at the Labour Party conference in 1999. On count two, he was found not guilty of attempted indecent assault. assault in 2001 at MTV offices when he was accused of trying to pull a woman into the men's bathroom. On count three, he was found guilty of sexual assault. The court heard that at a party in a bar in Soho in 2004, a woman who was speaking to Brand for less than a minute when he And his demeanor changed and she said that he grabbed her breasts and then grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into. A toilet cubicle. On count four, account of rape. He was found not guilty of raping that same woman at that Soho bar in 2004. On count five, that's account of sexual assault. He was found guilty of sexual assault at radio station in central London in 2004 or 2005. The woman told the court that she came out of a room to find Brand outside that room at the radio studio. where he allegedly said aye aye and grabbed her face, pushed her up against a wall. ...and kissed and groped her. On count six, account of rape, he was found guilty. The woman said that she met Brand at his gig at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2009. And a few days later, she said she went to his house where she said they knew they would have sex, but that the nature of the sex changed, at which point she said she did not consent. He was found guilty. And on count Seven account of sexual assault. He was found guilty. of an incident during a 2009 recording at Channel 4. The woman said that Brand became unhappy with how the day was going. She said his entourage said to give him a massage. She thought that they were joking. Brand then came back into the room, laid his head in her lap, and she said his mouth was so close to her groin that she could feel his breath. Now, there was no discernible reaction from Russell Brand as those verdicts were read out. His wife, Laura, who's been here for most of the days of this trial, seemed to be. Breathing hard and visibly fighting back tears as this was read out. And she rushed out ahead of others as Brand was then taken to the cells to await his lawyer's bail application. The judge did say that he was not minded to grant bail, but gave the defence barrister, Ian Winter KC, 20 minutes up until about now really to consider asking for it. Russell Brand then walked. ...walked swiftly from the dock with two female guards and was led away. Now, after the verdict was read out, the judge, Mr Justice Benetton, said sit down, Brand, and he said that his view is that he will receive a significant custodial sentence. Can you just reflect for us a little bit on... some of the defence and prosecution back and forth because I know it struck me throughout the trial that what we were witnessing was, yes, the trial of an individual and the victims involved, but there's also the whole question of attitudes around rape and sexual assault, which came out, I felt, even in the defence's defence. Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we heard women described being attacked by Russell Brand over a 10 year period from 1999 to 2009. Over the trial, he was described by the prosecution as ruthless and manipulative, a sexual predator, saying that his desire for sex was indiscriminate and that the women that he slept with meant nothing to him. The prosecution said that he would be nice to women, funny and flirtatious. when he wanted something and then would become demanding, childlike and entitled. And the prosecutor, Real Kami Jones-Casey, said that the women, she said, should all be believed, of course, as part of her evidence. She said the accusers didn't know each other when they came forward. They came forward independently of each other and had nothing to gain from making the allegations and putting them through the ordeal of being questioned about extremely intimate details. in court. And the things that were said in court, you can't get much more personal than that. The questioning, the cross-examination by the defence, because the women appeared in court behind a blue screen for that cross-examination, and they were robustly questioned by Russell Brand's lawyer. Now, he made the point on several occasions, Ian Wintercasey, Russell Brand's lawyer, that all of the women came forward to police after a Channel 4 documentary. documentary about sexual misconduct allegations about Russell Brand came out in 2023. The defense's case was that the documentary had poisoned the well of justice and caused the women to quote, invent, reimagine, recharacterize, recast their experiences with him. Mr. Winter told jurors that Brand lived a highly promiscuous lifestyle at the time. He said that he's never Never tried to hide that fact, but said. In his submissions to the jury that all of those encounters were consensual, one of the arguments that Mr. Winter made was by asking the jury that out of the many, many women who had sexual encounters with Russell Brand over that time period in question, why, he asked them, only three would accuse him. Of course, he's been found guilty of one count of rape today and not guilty of two counts of rape. Mr. Winter argued that a rapist wouldn't leave his email address with an alleged victim, wouldn't try to kiss them goodbye after an alleged attack, wouldn't leave them with photographs on their camera of him, which is what happened in some of the pieces of evidence that we heard. Also implored jurors to remove any personal judgment that they might have about Russell Brand's promiscuous behavior from their deliberations, telling them that, quote, Russell Brand. had an immense amount of sex and none of it was unlawful. Of course, we've heard from the jury today that his behaviour did in those instances, in that one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault, cross the line into criminality. And I know you're naturally reporting on what was said in court. What struck me about that whole question of a rapist wouldn't do this, a rapist wouldn't do that, a rapist wouldn't do the other. That, I think, speaks to a lot of attitudes that prevail in our country, in the world, about what rape is, what a rapist is, what a rapist looks like, where they might carry out their crimes. But the Met police in that statement, and we're going to hear more from them in a moment, as I understand it, the Met statement from Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy from the Met, he says in the statement, That Russell Brand used his influence, status and fame to exploit and sexually offend against women. And this is key, I think. As his profile grew, so too did his sense of entitlement. And it is that sense of entitlement that A, feeds crime, but it also feeds the blasé response to the crime, which would be leaving your address, emailing the next day, leaving a photo on your phone. It all speaks to that sort of... This melee of attitudes that still exist around rape that is clearly important to discuss, particularly after a trial like this, I think. Yeah, well, that kind of question of what a, quote, normal behaviour would be surrounding a rape is something that was brought up quite a bit because the complainants themselves actually said in many of their evidence that Russell Brand did behave normally after they... felt that they had been attacked or after they were attacked and that was something that they brought into their own submissions and on the question of fame some of them said that they didn't want to come forward at the time that it happened because He might have been the big star on the TV channel. He was the talent and they didn't feel like they would be believed. By his own admission in the evidence that he gave, he said that he had previously been comfortable with allowing his fame to facilitate sexual access, which he said in his evidence he now thinks of as wrong. He said, I do recognise I have been a very determined and focused man. With women, he said, quote, I've been persuasive. seductive, begging and flirting and dedicated a lot of my life to what seems now beyond reckless philandering and idiocy. Now quite an interesting part of the case was that he did do interviews with police obviously after he had been charged with these offences and in them he gave pre-recorded statements. Pre-prepared statements and didn't answer any specific questions about the allegations that had been put to him. But in his evidence in court. Thank He told the jury details like remembering complainants variously as loquacious, wide-eyed, pixie-ish and flirty and the prosecution argued that he you was relying heavily on evidence that he had not mentioned to police very in those interviews. They accused him of deliberately tailing his accounts. much. After he had seen and heard what evidence had been compiled against him, he said for his part that for several of the allegations he initially couldn't remember them at all, or that his memory had later escalated after he said he had reviewed interviews, videos, and visited in some cases, in the case of the Soho bar, he visited the... bathroom where the incident was alleged to have taken place and interestingly for two of the allegations of sexual assault he said he couldn't remember the incidents and said that the actions described wouldn't have turned him on sexually.