by Democrat reporter
Russell Brand is facing years in prison after being found guilty of one rape and three counts of sexual assault following his high-profile criminal trial.
Brand, now 51, preyed on women he encountered while becoming one of Britain’s best-known stand-up comedians, a lauded TV and radio host, and a Hollywood movie star.
The comedian and actor closed his eyes in the dock at Southwark Crown Court as he was found guilty of raping a young fan he met after one of his Hammersmith Apollo shows in 2009.
Brand was found guilty of sexually assaulting a Channel 4 worker during a forced massage in 2009.
Jurors also found Brand guilty of sexually assaulting a Capital Radio worker after encountering her in a corridor in 2005.
He was found guilty of groping another MTV worker during a party at a Soho bar in 2004, but not guilty of going on to orally rape her in a toilet.
The judge told Brand the consequence of the verdicts is a “significant custodial term”.
It can now be revealed he has been accused of raping two more women and could face further criminal charges.
The Metropolitan Police has confirmed that investigations are ongoing into two further allegations of rape made against Brand.
Russell Brand was supported by his wife, Laura Gallacher, at Southwark Crown Court.At pre-trial court hearings, it was revealed that one of the complaints comes from a woman who dated Brand when he was 30 years old and she was a 16-year-old schoolgirl.
The jury at the trial found Brand not guilty of raping a woman he met at a cabaret show on the fringes of the 1999 Labour Party conference in Bournemouth.
Brand stood upright in the dock and showed limited emotion as the verdicts were delivered.
He loudly replied, “Yes, My Lord” when he was remanded into custody. Brand now faces the prospect of a lengthy prison term when he is sentenced on Monday.
Before entering the dock to hear the verdicts, Brand had said “I love you” to his wife, Laura Gallacher, the daughter of golfer Bernard Gallacher.
Ms Gallacher was seen to hunch over in the public gallery when Brand was told he now faces an inevitable prison term. Gallacher, who had supported Brand at court throughout the trial, was later seen leaving the court building.
The judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, told Brand: “You’ve been convicted of a number of offences including rape. The consequence of that is inevitably a significant custodial term. My current view is that I therefore have to remand you into custody.”
The trial heard how Brand had forced his victims into sexual activity, sometimes within seconds of them first meeting, using his immense fame to determinedly pursue a goal of sex with 5,000 women.
Southwark Crown Court heard how Brand, who once boasted he would not relent in his pursuit of sex before getting his “birthright orgasm”, ignored pleas from women for him to stop.
Six women gave evidence against Brand, while the former comedian, who was once married to Katy Perry, could not persuade any of his celebrity friends or former showbiz colleagues to give evidence in his defence.
The media personality was accused of attacking women in a hotel room, at his luxury London home, in their workplaces, and in a Soho bar toilet during a four-week trial.
The 51-year-old had denied the three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault, and one allegation of attempted indecent assault.
During his evidence, Brand said consent during sex was “fundamental” and suggested it is “more important than the sex itself”.
He denied having a “goal” to sleep with 5,000 women, and while he admitted he was “obsessed” with sex in his younger years, he denied the extent of the impact on his life.
Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy, who led the Metropolitan Police investigation, paid tribute to the “extraordinary courage, resilience and determination” of the women who spoke out against Brand.
He said: “Despite intense media and public scrutiny, they relived deeply personal and traumatic experiences and placed their trust in us. Without their bravery, this outcome would not have been possible.
In September 2023, an investigation by journalists from The Sunday Times, The Times, and Channel 4 Dispatches published accusations from women who said they had been raped, sexually abused, and degraded by Brand.
The revelations prompted four women to come forward to accuse Brand of criminal offences, while another two women came forward once Brand had been charged.
Evidence at his criminal trial revealed Brand to be a man who abused his fame to obtain sex while treating women as objects, while his entourage and showbiz bosses faced accusations of “normalising” sexual misconduct and failing to act on complaints against the star.
Brand got his big TV break in 2004 when he was chosen to host Big Brother’s Big Mouth, and within a couple of months of the show starting, he had sexually assaulted a woman in the Nordic bar in Soho, central London.
At a party of his former MTV colleagues, Brand grabbed the woman’s breasts while standing in the middle of the bar.
She accused him of dragging her to the men’s toilets and orally raping her, but the jury found Brand not guilty on that count.
The woman told the court the “lad culture” of the time meant she did not report her interaction with Brand to police, telling the court: “He was a celebrity and it would be his word against mine. I just thought the odds weren’t in my favour.”
A worker at Capital Radio said Brand forced himself on her during a visit to the station in 2005, pinning her to a wall while he groped and “sloppily” kissed her.
She told jurors that members of Brand’s entourage watched on as the attack happened, and did nothing but laugh as she looked over, pleading for them to intervene.
Russell Brand was married to pop star Katy PerryA Russell Brand superfan told the court how she willingly had a threesome with the comedian in 2009 after one of his shows at the Hammersmith Apollo.
Overawed by Brand’s fame, the 21-year-old – who was in a relationship at the time – agreed to go to the star’s £2.3 million Hampstead townhouse a few days later for sex.
But she said the encounter started with Brand unnervingly forcing her to strip, shower, and brush her teeth before they went to bed together.
She told jurors they had “awkward” consensual sex, but Brand then forced her into anal sex and ignored her cries of pain.
Women were a “disposable commodity” to Brand, said prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC, who dubbed him a “sexual predator”.
“They didn’t matter to him. He didn’t even need to know their names. They were just a means to an end.”
The fan who was raped at Brand’s home later bumped into him at Edinburgh Festival, and said he apologised after she said he had treated her “like an animal”.
In 2009, during a recording session at Channel 4, members of Brand’s entourage, Jack Bayles and Gareth Roy, forced a young female staffer to give him a massage, the court heard.
When she had reluctantly agreed, Brand thrust his head into the woman’s groin and only got up again when apparently insulted that she had commented on his “bony” body.
“I was so repulsed by the situation”, she told the court, and said she complained afterwards to her Channel 4 bosses.
Brand was cleared by the jury of raping a woman at the Labour Party conference in 1999, after meeting them at the end of one of his cabaret shows.
He was also cleared of trying to indecently assault an MTV worker after dragging her towards a toilet at her workplace.
Brand was sacked by MTV after mocking 9/11; he shot to fame through Channel 4’s Big Brother, landed his own BBC Radio 2 show, and went on to star alongside the likes of Tom Cruise, Mila Kunis, Jonah Hill, and Helen Mirren in Hollywood movies like Arthur, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Rock Of Ages.
He dabbled in left-wing politics as his stardom waned, reinvented himself as a wellness guru, and turned to podcasts focusing on alt-right talking points and conspiracy theories.
Brand’s treatments for alcohol, drug, and sex addiction were largely kept out of the trial, but the jury did hear from his former PA Helen Berger, who recalled him conducting interviews in his underpants, getting depressed after sex, and treating women poorly.
Brand denied all the charges against him, and suggested the whole case was a conspiracy cooked up by the media.
Asked in the witness box if he blames the media for his downfall, Brand replied: “In some ways.”
But faced with the allegations against him, Brand could only insist that he values the idea of consent in sex while he struggled to remember the interactions with his accusers.
Brand also packed his defence case with a series of arguments that the victims could not have been raped because they did not run away, fight back, or scream for help while being attacked.
His barrister, Ian Winter KC, also argued to the jury that Brand could not be a rapist as he had not been accused during the #MeToo movement.
Brand’s own words from his 2007 book My Booky Wook also came back to haunt him, calling himself “demonically sexy” and admitting he could be “uneasy company” when in the pursuit of sex.
He wrote: “If I want something – whether it’s a job or a woman – I will determinedly, resolutely, remove anything that’s in the way, until I possess the object of my desire.”
Brand continued to make podcasts with his wife during the trial, telling his millions of followers on YouTube, Rumble, and X that he had felt God’s presence in court with him.
But Brand now has to face up to the reality that he is a convicted rapist, who will likely be imprisoned for years and spend the rest of his life on the sex offender’s register.