The trial of Russell Brand continues. He’s accused of sexual offences in relation to encounters with six women, many years ago.
It is notable, as usual with such trials, how much of the ‘evidence’ is of the ‘he said / she said’ variety. There are occasional glimpses into what may pass as normal for the high-profile men (usually entertainers of one sort or another) granted free ‘sexual favours’ by female fans. This struck me today when I read an article in The Times (£), “Woman #5” having given testimony yesterday.
A BBC article covering yesterday’s proceedings is here. The start of the piece takes up the remainder of this blog piece:
“A woman who says Russell Brand raped her at his home in London told police she “couldn’t speak or breathe” during the alleged attack, a jury has heard. [J4MB emphasis: The woman seemingly doesn’t relate why she could neither speak nor breathe during the alleged (anal) rape.]
The 51-year-old entertainer is accused of raping the woman in 2009 after meeting her at London’s Hammersmith Apollo, where he had been performing as a stand-up comedian.
Brand faces seven charges in the trial in total – three counts of rape, three charges of sexual assault and one of indecent assault.
The allegations, made by six female complainants, span a 10-year period between 1999 and 2009. He denies all the charges.
In video evidence of her speaking to a police officer, the woman said she performed a sex act on Brand at the London theatre after being invited for drinks following the show. [J4MB emphasis: The Times reports she willingly had a threesome with Brand and a 19-year-old woman backstage after they were “selected” by him, and that she’d performed oral sex on Brand but didn’t want to have intercourse as she had a boyfriend at the time. Good to know where she drew her moral lines.]
She said she gave him her phone number, [J4MB emphasis] explaining she was “a massive Russell Brand fan” and a “massive comedy fan” at the time. [J4MB: Maybe she thought Brand wanted to meet up with her again for a game of chess or something else unrelated to sex.]
After that night, she said Brand messaged her and she went to his house in Hampstead knowing they would have sex. [J4MB emphasis. How did she know they would have sex? Presumably she no longer had the aforementioned boyfriend.]
But she said a consensual encounter became rape when Brand started having anal sex with her and ignored her pleas for him to stop.
She said when she arrived at his home, Brand told her she needed to have a shower “because my hair smelled funny”. He then asked her to brush her teeth.
“I was trying to make a joke of what he was making me do”, she said. “All of those things made me feel, ‘I don’t like this’.” [J4MB emphasis: Then why didn’t she leave Brand’s house at that point?]
The woman said a short while after getting on his bed, she was turned over. It was then she said she was allegedly raped.
She told police: “From the very moment it happened, I felt I had willingly gone there and from what his reputation was, what did I expect?”
She said Brand “hurt me and harmed me, and when I asked him to stop, he didn’t“. [J4MB emphasis: How does this tally with her claim that she could neither breathe nor speak during the alleged attack?] She added: “The horror in anyone that I told was not enough to make me believe I didn’t deserve it.”
The woman said she told friends and family afterwards, and went through sexual health tests – believing that she had contracted a disease from Brand.” [J4MB emphasis. Presumably the tests proved negative, or she’d have stated otherwise. And even if they’d been positive, what proof would there have been that Brand was the source of the disease? None.]
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